Day 117 and 118
I missed yesterday’s post so I will have to write about it today. This will be a longer post, because I am writing about Pompeii and Assisi. Enjoy lots of information and pictures!
Day 117 (Jan. 8th), when arriving in Pompeii we had to find a parking place. There were people standing on the sidewalks holding signs. We picked a guy with a sign that said parking $5. We parked and had a quick lunch in his restaurant before we headed on to the city of Pompeii.
Pompeii was an ancient Roman town-city near modern Naples, in the Campania region of Italy, in the territory of the commune of Pompeii. Pompeii is about 8 km (5.0 mi) away from Mount Vesuvius. It covered a total of 64 to 67 hectares (170 acres) and was home to approximately 11,000 to 11,500 people on the basis of household counts.
The eruption destroyed the city, killing its inhabitants and burying it under tons of ash. Evidence for the destruction originally came from a surviving letter by Pliny the Younger, who saw the eruption from a distance and described the death of his uncle Pliny the Elder, an admiral of the Roman fleet, who tried to rescue citizens. The site was lost for about 1,500 years until its initial rediscovery in 1599 and broader rediscovery almost 150 years later by Spanish engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre in 1748. The objects that lay beneath the city have been preserved in ash for centuries because of the lack of air and moisture. These artifacts provide an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city during the Pax Romana. During the excavation concrete was used to fill in the voids in the ash layers that once held human bodies. This allowed archaeologists to see the exact position the person was in when he or she died.
When we walked the long path to the starting place or where we thought we were to start, we all started our Rick Steves audio and he started telling us to look at this and that; but there was nothing around like it that he was telling us about. Pretty soon we discovered we had entered the town at the end of the tour. Rather than restart we just listened to everything in backwards order.
There was a lot of the city that was under excavation and restoration. Some parts that would have been nice to see, could not be seen. One place that I wanted to see was the mill, but it was under excavation. While walking around we found places in buildings where the tile floor was still there. A lot of the floors have some kind of an animal design in the tile. One floor had a big dog with a chain around its neck.
There were concrete sculptures, that were found when they were uncovering the city. While searching when they hit an area that was hollow they would fill it up with concrete and when it was dry they brought it out and they had the sculpture of a human. The ashes from the volcano had preserved the space perfectly.
In the city was The House of the Faun. The House of the Faun was named for the bronze statue of the dancing faun located, originally, on the lip of the impluvium, a basin for catching rainwater; it has been moved to the center of the pool. Fauns are spirits of untamed woodland, which literate and Hellenized Romans often connected to Pan and Greek satyrs, or wild followers of the Greek god of wine and agriculture, Dionysus.
The stone roads through Pompeii have deep ruts worn by the many rough wheels of carriages and other means of conveyance. The ruts were not good for the carriages, because when deep enough the wheels could get stuck and break. Road repair meant removing the over-worn stones and replacing them with new flat stones. The streets were also used as their drainage and sewage disposal system. Pompeii was a port city, therefore they were able to flood their streets to wash them clean, every day. Because of the daily flooding, large stepping stones were raised out of the ground at the intersections for people to walk across when the streets were flooded. Those stones were low enough for a carriage to go over, yet high enough that the water did not go over them. One way streets were designated by three stepping stone (one carriage entry) and four or five stepping stones for traffic both ways (two carriage passing)
As we made are way back through Pompeii we came to a big theater. Bria and Landon has running races around the theater. Crazy, I guess they had lots of energy to burn.
When we finished the audio guide we walked back towards our car. On the way back we got ice-cream and my ice cream was so terrible I threw a lot of it into the trash.
Day 118 (Jan. 9th), Assisi. What a lovely town situated on the top of hill! Many towns are situated on the tops of mountains in Italy; was that a means of defense in ancient time? The town of Assisi seemed asleep when we arrived. A few tourists (?) were walking around, but I guess it was too grey and cold that day. We drove one fourth of the way up and parked in a parking garage then walked up, up, and up. On our way to the top of the town we started our audio guide of Rick Steves (As you have guessed by now we listened to him a lot).
Assisi was the birthplace of St. Francis, who founded the Franciscan religious order in the town in 1208; and St. Clare (Chiara d’Offreducci), an early convert; who founded the Poor Sisters, which later became the Order of Poor Clares after her death. The 19th-century Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows was also born in Assisi.
We got mixed up where we were to go with Rick Steves, and we had to backtrack some. The landscape from Assisi was unspoiled. The pathways through Assisi were small and curvy. At one point we walked to the top where a castle of some sorts was. We wanted to visit it but we could not quickly find the right path to it. The path down again was a long sloped stairs back to the more active part of the town. There were shops and a few restaurants. We walked through a lot of back pathways.
In the front side of the town there was a pink and white striped church called, Basilica of Saint Clare. Being locked, we were unable to enter it.
Out towards the end of the town there was the Basilica of San Francesco. The building was pink and white striped also. Inside the floors had beautiful mosaics and gorgeous ceilings. The walls had many pictures on and had paintings around. The alter was wonderfully painted with many colors and pictures.
The basement of the basilica was twice as decorated as the first floor. Again the floor with the mosaics and walls with many colors. In the basement there was stairs going down to the tombs below the church. There were big concrete caskets with carvings on that we could not read.
As evening came more people were out and the wind came too! At a street vendor Jack bought a hat that said Assisi on it and in a quaint shop along the way Mom bought a nativity set of Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus. She liked it because the baby was wrapped in swaddling cloths. As it got darker we headed back to the car. We then drove back to Mark’s house for one night, before heading to France to fly home. It was felt like we were coming home again when we arrived at Mark’s house in Tuscany.
Ps: This is Sunday's and Monday's post.