Herculaneum (February 19)

Today was the first day of our nine-day school trip to Sicily!  From Viterbo, we would take a bus to Napoli, where a ferry would take us over to our first Sicilian destination, Catania.

On our way to Napoli, we first stopped in Herculaneum, a neighboring town to Pompeii, which also succumbed to the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius on that fateful day in August, 79 A.D.  While not the tourist attraction of

Pompeii, Hurculaneum also was once under 9+ feet of volcanic ash and lava.  It’s not a fully excavated as Pompeii but as a result it makes for a more intimate (more manageable) tour through the ruins.  Like Pompeii, it is amazing that at one time all of what we saw was completely buried. 

In this picture, to the left are boat houses and where the grass is located below was once a river where merchants brought in their fishing boats for commerce.  The well-to-do had apartments above the boat houses that overlooked the picturesque views of the river.  Here is a picture (right) of a typical fishing boat, albeit severely charred from the intense heat from the eruption.

As we toured Herculaneum, students made presentations about how the eruption occurred (see left), a typical day for merchants or students at the local college, and how the well-to-do use to entertain their guests in their luxurious mansions. Here is a very well-preserved mosaic (below right) found in one of the highlighted mansions on our tour.  Amazing!!

Yvonne taking a moment to relax. Ahh!

The day was pretty cloudy and overcast but thankfully it did not rain on us.  There was a very brief moment in the day when the clouds thinned just enough for me to take this picture of Mount Vesuvius in the background.  While truncated today, the mountain once had an apex prior to the eruption of 79 A.D.