Pompeii: The Incinerated City of Antiquity

I definitely underestimated Pompeii, both in terms of its size and its allure to me.

At first, I hesitate to even visit the excavations, as crowds of tourists flock towards the entrance and I ask to be informed of the reason for this surge: on the first Sunday of every month, all state museums and archaeological sites in Italy can be visited free of charge. Then I gather my courage and join the others on the site.

It is huge. You enter a complete city where life suddenly came to a halt about 1,940 years ago. It was probably on August 24, 79, when the neighboring Vesuvius erupted and for 18 hours rained down huge amounts of pumice and ash on Pompeii. People were killed by flying rocks or suffocated in the toxic sulfur fumes. After that, the ancient city on the Gulf of Naples was buried under a layer of volcanic ash and pumice up to 25 meters thick for over 1,500 years and was thus preserved in this way.

I am overwhelmed by the size of the complex and would like to run in all directions at once. I spend a lot of time in the amphitheater and in the individual villas and houses of the former inhabitants of the city. The history completely captivates me, I can feel the lively bustle of the past and its sudden end, followed by days of dying that followed the prosperity in the ultramodern Pompeii by the standards of the time. Just when I think I have covered most of the archaeological site, I finally reach the Forum. The elongated square is overwhelming, I don't know where to look first. It is surrounded by numerous important buildings: several temples, a basilica, a market hall, and the seat of the cloth merchants, the wealthiest guild in the city. Then I discover another small and a large theater, another forum, and the thermal baths.

I have been walking on the site for 5 hours already and I still haven't seen everything. When it closes at 7:30 pm, I am one of the last visitors to leave the site and only then do I realize that I haven't eaten anything or hardly drunk anything since breakfast. Nevertheless, I would still like to stay a little longer, surround myself with and be intoxicated by the history.

And yes, I had to be very patient to take photos without people, but the site is so big that even crowds of tourists are distributed quite well on it. At least I saved the € 13 admission fee, which I invest in a large pizza at the end of the day. In any case, I am very glad to have seen the excavation site because Pompeii is now and definitely one of the highlights of my trip…