qui per un breve periodo

I don’t quite know how to describe what I saw and experienced in the last 3 days. It was at the same moment somber and fascinating. I walked on paving that was laid down 200 years before Christ. I toured the homes of people who, with little warning, were buried alive by ash and volcanic mudslides, and then left undisturbed and forgotten for 1500 years. I studied the architectural detailing, construction methods, and urban planning of these small cities and realized that not so much has changed from what we know today. Although these were a people of pagan worship and overtly self-indulgent lifestyles, you could see through the remaining traces that their day-to-day lives were not so different from ours. I spent one day in Pompeii, one in Herculaneum, and a morning walking around the rim of the volcano that destroyed them. I am going to let pictures tell the rest of the story.


entry hall of a typical roman house


public urinal and plumbing system


examples of intricate floor tile work


house in herculaneum with charred remains of wood structure


wall frescoes depicting grand architecture


the basilica (meeting house) of pompeii


peering into the volcano


the body cast of a pompeiian caught in the ash