Old Pompeii: The Dream

Normally I try to avoid talking about cities as a whole when I write about places I’ve been, but it’s almost impossible in this case. Old Pompeii was once a city, but now it is an excavation site. There are a lot of things to see, but each should be explored all at once. There are two versions of Pompeii; the historian’s dream, and the historian’s reality. This week we’ll focus on the dream. Positive stuff first, right?

The ash that enveloped Pompeii and Herculaneum did a magnificent job of preserving the town. A great many frescoes, buildings, and objects survived to show what life was like in Pompeii before the volcano erupted. It’s the next best thing to actual time travel!

You will find shops that once held the ancient equivilent of fast food, beautiful works of art, stones which were meant to be crosswalks when the rain filled the streets, and many more surprises in this ancient city; including an ingenious method of advertisement. Pompeii was known for it’s brothels back in the day, and so to advertise that fact as well as direct potential customers, there are various stones placed strategically around the city which depict phalluses. In the brothels themselves are frescoes above the doors of various rooms which depict which act it’s occupants were particularly good at.

These bits of Pompeii aren’t child friendly but there are plenty of other things for families to enjoy, including many villas with fountains still intact (thought not filled with water) and the infamous Cave Canem mosaics which tell passers by to beware, there is a dog guarding the home! If you want to impress your tour guide you can pronounce the warning in proper, classic latin; Kah-weh Kah-nehm. Latin did not have a ‘V’ sound, they’re pronounced as ‘W’s, and ‘C’s are always pronounced with the hard ‘K’ sound.

I remember getting an ice-cream cone when I was there, but after Covid I would expect that the food selection would be limited or none. Bring a lunch! Bring sunscreen and an umbrella to use as a parsole, too. It gets exceedingly hot during the day, the paving stones just reflect all that heat back up at you, and believe you me your legs will burn because of that reflected heat. Bring lots of water too so you don’t get dehydrated!

Next week we’ll be taking a look at the reality of pompeii, which is quite a bit darker than one might be lead to believe.