Saturday - Pompeii

In August 79 AD, Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed by the eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius. The eruption went on for two days. The ruined city was discovered nearly 1600 years later, in 1748. Some digs have shown that the city had likely suffered from the volcano or other seismic events before 79AD, due to findings of street at different depths. Pompeii was founded by the Oscans of central Italy around the 6th century BC. The city now serves as a snap-shot of what a Roman city was like in the first century AD.

Getting from Benevento to Pompeii involved taking a nap on the train from Benevento to Naples and then standing on a grossly hot metro type train for about half an hour to get from Naples to Pompeii. Six of us went together: me, Will, and four of his friends from Universita degli Studi del Sannio. We ended up splitting into two groups, the three Polish students and the three American students. Apparently Americans are more interested in taking picures of everything, and the other three didn't want to stop and wait for us all the time.


At one point we found an area that was debatably open to the public. It wasn't actually close off, but we did have to crawl through a hole to get into it. For the most part the ruins in this section looked the same as the rest of the city, but it was nice to walk around without so many other people trying to look at all the same things as you. It was also exciting to simply be somewhere we probably weren't supposed to be.


One of the most intersting sites was the amphitheater, a site that could be found in most Roman cities. In fact, a communities amphitheater often became the symbol of its attachment to Rome and its membership in the Roman Empire. Scattered throughout what was the Roman Empire, the remains of over 200 amphitheaters have been found. Amphitheaters differ from 'regular' Roman theaters in that they are fully circular, and theaters were semicircular in shape. In ancient Rome Amphitheaters were used for games and sports rather than theatrical performances.

Previous Monday - Bologna

(Pisa was actually after Bologna)

In Bologna we walked through a museum before touring the area where the Ghetto had been. The museum wasn't all that interesting; the only interesting part was when we discussed how Jews in Italy got their last names while looking at the map hanging in the museum. The idea of having your name changed everytime you moved to a different city seems very strange considering the emphasis placed on last names in our society.


The tour of the Ghetto had some very good points, like seeing that "hell street" was the main street through the area. That really helped to show what area of the city was chosen to become the Jewish Ghetto. As the tour guide said, it had been a very poor and ill-reputed district.

After a very good lunch Ilana, Joe and I went shopping along the main street of Bologna, not that any of us bought much. Still, it was fun to walk around a city that is so different from Florence. It's smaller and less crowded, not nearly as much of a tourist city. It was all over a different experience than we usually get walking around Florence.