The Silver Wind anchored off the Italian town of Sorrento early on Sunday, July 3rd. Michael and I had signed up for an all-day tour of the Roman ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. We saw little of Sorrento itself, just the view from the tour bus as we passed through on our way north.
Francesca, our tour guide, told us that Sorrento is actually several small communities strung along the cliff tops. The residences all seem to have gardens in their back yards. Olives and grapes are grown commercially in the area as well as in individual gardens. My reaction to Sorrento, in fact to all of the part of southern Italy we saw that day, was that it all seemed very familiar. This part of Italy resembles the Italian neighborhoods in the New York area where I grew up. In fact the names of many of the small towns are names of families I knew when I was young. These small towns haven't changed much in the past hundred years. The Italian immigrants to the U. S. built homes similar to the ones they left behind. Both the U.S. and Italy have modernized but the spirit of the old neighborhoods remains. The big difference is that Sorrento is semi-tropical: palm trees and olive trees don't grow in the northeastern United States.
Sorrento is an hour or so south of Naples, a very large Italian city. Sunday meant beach day and thousands were on the road headed south from Naples toward the coast and its narrow stony beaches below steep cliffs. It was fortunate that we were headed north in the opposite direction. Our bus kept going north past the autostrada exit for Pompeii. The autostrada is a toll road equivalent to a U.S. interstate highway. Francesca said that the crowds at Pompeii are greatest in the morning. Our small group would visit it in the afternoon. We headed toward Herculaneum the less well-known city also destroyed by the A.D. 79 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Ash and lava preserved these two towns exactly as they were at the end of August A.D. 79.
We spent several hours at the Herculaneum excavation. It is better preserved than Pompeii but covers a much smaller area. Ash and cinders buried Pompeii while Herculaneum was covered first by a pyroclastic flow of superheated gas and mud followed later by lava. It was buried deeper and was harder to excavate. Excavation has been limited by the fact that the modern town of Ercolano sits atop a good part of the site. A small wealthy community on the sea, which no longer reaches this far inland, Herculaneum shows how a segment of Roman society lived daily life.
After lunch we toured Pompeii, only a few miles south east. Here the site is more open. Excavation is more complete as Pompeii was buried in ash and cinder, which was much easier to remove. Pompeii was more of a commercial center. There were more storefronts, taverns, wine shops and markets. It had a fine amphitheater and a school for gladiators. Both Herculaneum and Pompeii had piped in water from aqueducts and public sanitation. Unique to Pompeii were the plaster casts made of citizens and animals. An Italian archeologist discovered that he could reconstruct the shapes of figures that had perished in the ash and cinders by pouring plaster into the airspaces he and others discovered in the debris. The actual remains have turned to ash but the space the bodies had occupied remained as empty bubbles in the ash. I took lots of pictures of mosaics, remnants of murals, pillars and statuary.
My main fear for both sites is that they are being loved to death. Excavations started in the late 1700's before modern archeology was invented. Much was lost in a hunt for treasure and statuary before people appreciated the value of the site. Modern archeology has revealed a great amount of detail about how the 1st century Romans lived. These two places are a snapshot in time – August 28th A.D. 79. Tourists, including me, want to see it. Unfortunately, people touch the remnants of two thousand year old murals and walk on the carefully pieced together mosaic floors. I do not have high hopes that these wonderful things will last, especially as money for preservation efforts will be scarce for the foreseeable future. I count myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to see these sites.
We sailed from Sorrento a little bit early. Captain Michele Macarone Palmieri, a character if there ever was one, took the Silver Wind on a short tour of the Sorrento coast. Passengers got a close up view of the cliffs form the water, the houses clinging to the rocks above, the stony beaches below and the switchback paths between the two. He tooted the ship's horn as we turned toward Naples and the Tyrrhenian Sea (the name of the waters between Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and western Italy.) Rumor has it that he was bidding hello to his sister who lives in the north of Sorrento. I think he may have just been showing some whimsy. A man who wears a baseball cap with his full name on one side and "captain" on the other cannot be completely serious.
Night fell as we rounded the cape of Naples and city lights came on. It was most beautiful.
No comments:
Post a Comment