The ruined city of Pompeii lies at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, the volcano whose eruption in AD 79 engulfed and subsequently encased the city in six meters of ash and pumice-stone. Excavated over several centuries, what we see today, together with the neighboring site of Herculaneum, gives the finest example anywhere of a Roman town and its way of life. Only 16 years before its destruction, Pompeii was badly damaged by an earthquake from which its population of 20,000 had not yet finished rebuilding. At the first sign of the eruption, people began leaving, so when the final flow descended like a tidal wave, only about 2,000 people remained trapped in the city.
Abandoned ever since, Pompeii started to emerge when excavations began in the 18th century and since then, about three-fifths of the total area (the city walls had a perimeter of three kilometers) have been recovered. There are so many place to visit in Pompeii. The recommended place includes:
- The Theater
Built into the sloping ground, the Teatro Grande (Large Theater) could seat 5,000 spectators and is used for Son et lumière shows in summer. The top row commands one of the best views of the city and Vesuvius. The adjoining Teatro Piccolo (Little Theater), better preserved and the earliest example of a roofed Roman theater, dates to about 75 BC. It would have been used mainly for musical performances. East of the Little Theater is the Tempio di Giove Meilichio and the adjacent Tempio di Iside – Temple of Isis – you can still see an inscription scratched on its walls by the French novelist Stendhal in 1817. Enter the tree-shaded Triangular Forum, intended mainly for theater-goers, through a fine arcade to get to gladiators’ barracks. Inscriptions recording their successes in gladiatorial games were found on its columns.
2. Terme Stabiane (Stabian Baths)
At the corner of Via dell’Abbondanza and Via Stabiana are the largest and best-preserved baths in Pompeii. The entrance leads into the colonnaded palaestra, with a swimming pool on the left; on the right are the male and female baths, separated by the stoves for heating the water. Each facility has a circular cold bath (frigidarium), a changing room (apodyterium) with racks for clothing, a warm bath (tepidarium), and a hot bath (caldarium) heated by air-ducts in the floor and walls. Gladiators trained in the gymnasium, which was also part of the Stabian complex.
3. Forum
The principal square of a Roman town, the Forum is enclosed by colonnades and bounded on the north by the Temple of Jupiter, rising on a three-meter base. At the corner to its right is the Macellum, a hall for selling food. Various shrines, temples, and other buildings surround the Forum – the Shrine of the Lares; the Temple of Vespasian; a hall for selling wool; and the Curia, where the town council met. Nearby, the basilicawas used as a market and a law-court. To its left, the Temple of Apollo is surrounded by 48 Ionic columns. One of the newer homes to be opened is that of Triptolemus, in front of the basilica. Dating from the second century BC, this was obviously owned by a prosperous and important family, as you can tell by its two atriums (courtyards) and two peristyles (columned garden courtyards).
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