On September 17th,  we woke up to another beautiful sunny day and loaded the buses for Pompeii.  Instead of taking our usual coastal route, we went up over the mountains so we had very different views.    The city of Pompeii is a partially buried Roman town-city near Naples.   Pompeii now lies about ten kilometres from the Bay of Naples although in AD 79, Pompeii was actually a port city.    Pompeii was partially destroyed and buried under 13-20 feet of ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.   The town was actually lost for nearly 1,700 years before its rediscovery in 1748.  The excavation over time has provided a detailed insight into the life of a city during the long period of peace and minimal expansion during the Roman Empire.    It was interesting that some of the buildings such as the forum, houses and bath houses remain well preserved.   Once our group arrived we spent the morning on a group tour which was very informative.  After lunch we split up and wandered around the town on our own.

Entering the old town of Pompeii.    The entrance to the ruins of the city is the Porta Marina.   The old town was actually huge and about two thirds of the original town has been excavated.    It is estimated that about twenty thousand people lived here, including merchants, manufacturers and farmers.   Half of the population were slaves.    

Details of an excavated column.   The objects buried beneath Pompeii were well-preserved for almost two thousand years.  Teh lack of air and moisture allowed for the objects to remain underground with little to no deterioration.  Now of  course  weathering, erosion, light exposure, water damage, poor methods of excavation and reconstruction, tourism, vandalism and theft have damaged the site.   

I liked the colours and textures of these walls.  

There were lots of displays of  artifacts in storage.

More pottery on display.

When photographing  through the glass It was difficult to get pictures of the bodies without glare.  As a side note,   the archeologists discovered voids in the ash,  containing human bones/decomposed bodies.    A technique was devised to inject plaster (and now resin) into the void and let it harden.  Then the ash would be carefully chipped away in order to recreate the forms of Vesuvius's victims.  We were told that most of the casts are in the Archaeological Museum of Naples.  

A typical street in Pompeii  with Mount Vesuvius behind.  I had to wait a while before I got get a picture with no people.  

At one time, a  wealthy person's house.

 Today Pompeii is a Unesco World Heritage Site and is one of the most popular tourist attractions of Italy getting approximately 2.5 million visitors very year.   You can see just how many people were in the ancient streets.  The old town was very spread out but there were still people everywhere.  

An old oven in one of the gardens.  

Ancient versus Modern. 

This is the large Greek theatre with supposedly  perfect acoustics.    Here was the place where performances of comedies and tragedies were held.  

 A view from the forum.  

The forum of Pompeii with Mount Vesuvius in the background.

A different view of the forum.  

A group of tourists  enjoying the afternoon.  

Just before we started walking back to where the bus was to pick us up, Alfio took a group shot.

It was finally time to meet everyone and walk back to where the bus was meeting us.  This was a view on the way out.

Once back in Minori, I went for a walk and took a few sunset photos.

It was starting to get  dark.  Some of the buildings were restaurants and hotels.  On our last night in town we actually ate in one and had a great view of the water.