May 28, 2023

May 28, 2023

This morning we awoke and took the same Circumvesuviana train as yesterday. This time we got off earlier at the Herculaneum ruins. This is another town that was buried by the 79 AD eruption. The area excavated here is much smaller. Many modern houses surrounding the site would have to be razed to uncover more. We spent two hours walking up and down the small grid of eight city blocks. There seems to be fewer surviving wall paintings here compared to Pompeii. This city was buried quicker and twice as high. As a result many upper floors have been preserved. Some ceilings and stairways are visible.

It is interesting to now see how tall the ceilings and the central atria were. Roman houses had plain exteriors with no windows. To keep an open Impluvium and Peristyle garden secure, they needed these high walls that would be difficult to scale. For Romans the focus was interior courtyards like we have seen in Morocco and other Arab communities.

Herculaneum has more surviving wooden structural elements, albeit very charred. In one house we saw not only wooden beams, but also a dining room sliding door and a bed frame.

Color has survived in a few interesting spots in Herculaneum. I knew Greek temples were painted; but one Roman house shows how this Peristyle courtyard garden had brightly colored red columns. Nothing like I would have expected.

Another cool spot was a wine shop. Since many people were illiterate, there had to be a sign telling people what they offered. In this case, it was four wines of different colors and their price.

After two hours we made our way out of the ruins, and walked uphill back to the train station. We returned to Naples and found the Metro line. We took it across Naples to Pozzouli, the hometown of Sophia Loren. Its harbor was the main port of Roman Italy. Just around the corner we find the Flavian Amphitheater, the third largest Roman arena. We flew over it on our approach to the Naples airport.

I wanted to visit this Roman arena because it is renowned for having the best preserved underground. This is where the gladiators and animals would have been kept. The lions would have been raised on wooden cranes coming through holes in the arena floor. While the vast underground is mostly intact, we really didn't find it too interesting. Probably because the wooden apparatus that raised the animals didn't survive the centuries.

We made our way back to the hotel and rested. Before dinner we walked to Capella Sansevero. We tried to visit it earlier and found that tickets sell out days in advance. This reservation was the only one available. After presenting our ticket we were allowed in this tiny chapel a few minutes early. It is all Baroque and totally filled with statues. The centerpiece is the Veiled Christ.

I actually found two other artworks more compelling. Most of the sculptures represent allegories or virtues. I liked a female standing statue called Veiled Modesty. But my favorite hands-down is another called Disillusion. It has a man entangled in a fishing net. It had to have been one of the hardest sculptures to carve.

For dinner we had pizza again, but this time with a tasty Caesar salad. We had a long conversation with our tablemates from Australia. It turned out they are staying next door to us and they also came to this restaurant three times.