Ancient Cities

Ancient Cities

Over the last two days, we have visited two ancient cities.  One you probably have heard of is Pompeii; the other is Paestum which is a two hour car ride south and east of Sorrento.

Paestum was founded by the Greeks as a colony city between 600-700 B.C.  It was a walled city on the coast that never was buried and preserved by the affects of volcanic eruption.

We arranged to have a guide to ourselves.  Being so old, we needed some imagination and our guide Silvia helped.  Paestrum was sacked by Germanic tribes in the 5th century, and then abandoned.  Nature took over for more than a 1000 years with the area becoming part of large swamp.  

Like Paestum, Pompeii was founded between 600-700 B.C.  Mount Vesuvius did a much better job of preserving the ancient city of Pompeii, and what we saw requires little imagination.  The city was buried under 13-20 feet of volcanic ash and pumice in 79 A.D. 

Here is one of four entrances to the city.  Back in the days of protecting your city from invasion, you limited entry points to a few.

Much of Pompeii’s streets and building walls were excavated starting over 200 years ago and today you walk through a small city. It is amazing what is now Pompeii with the all of the volcanic ash removed.  If you look hard, the streets show the small ruts where the chariots frequently passed.

Much is preserved such as this set of murals of this house where the owner either appreciated art or was an artist.

The more powerful citizens had bigger homes and more art.  Art often was on the floor as well as the walls and ceilings such as this home.

Their churches were called temples.  Services occurred just outside the temple such as sacrifices of animals to the particular god the temple was dedicated to.  The high priest was the only person allowed in the temple.  The roofs were made of wood and obviously are long gone after 2500 years.

As you likely know, people were trapped in Pompeii by Vesuvius.  Some were preserved by the ash and archeologists found them well over a 

century later.  Those found were parts of a vast collection of what was  Pompeii in 79 A.D.

During our visit, it was easy to show Vesuvius in the background.  It’s about 5 miles away.  It seems to remind us of what it did to this city.

It is really amazing that so much has been kept as is was 2000 years ago.  There is much to see here and never enough time in a day.  

As you leave the ancient city, there a huge bronze statute probably meant to signify the strength of its people.  They probably didn’t suspect their real enemy was the mountain to the north.