Quite the day in Pompeii! – J-term Abroad: Roman Structures, Engineering & Society
Field Trips!

Quite the day in Pompeii!

The day had finally come… Ciao, Roma! Thanks for the thousands of steps, the countless bites of pizza, and the abundance of memories. How crazy to think that we will be heading back home the next time we are in Rome!

This morning we hopped on our first train as a whole class for a short ride to Naples! You could say it was a little hectic maneuvering thirty-one people each with at least two pieces of luggage through the cobblestone streets of Rome and Termini station. The guys quickly learned that the loading and unloading of luggage is much more efficient in an assembly-line fashion.

Along with most of the other girls, I received plenty of jabs about the contents of my bag.

“Jordan, did you pack the colosseum in here?”

“Did you pack all of Rome to take home with you?”

We have some true comedians on this trip, let me tell you.

Once we arrived in Naples we grabbed a quick lunch and met our new tour guide, Michaela, who would be leading us throughout Pompeii for the afternoon.

Pompeii. Where do I even begin? Most of us have been hearing stories about Pompeii since we were in elementary school. It has always fascinated me ever since I was little so you can only imaging how giddy I was as our bus started it’s journey towards Mount Vesuvius.

On our way to Pompeii, Michaela shared with us that we were in for a treat. Apparently, snow rarely covers the peak of Mount Vesuvius. Look at us Minnesotans bringing snow everywhere we go! She continued on to give us a little bit of background information about this ancient city.

It was 79 BCE when Mount Vesuvius erupted, freezing and preserving an ancient culture in a moment in time. The people of Pompeii did not realize Mount Vesuvius was a volcano leaving them completely blindsided when this “mountain” began spewing smoke and ash. Contrary to some literature, the majority of the people were suffocated by ash-filled air and volcanic gases rather than coming in contact with lava.

Once we stepped foot in the historical sites of Pompeii, the exploration began! From perfectly preserved clay pottery to bath houses, we spent the afternoon searching the abandoned streets.   The engineering that already existed during this time continues to impress me. There were raised sidewalks on either side of the street paired with a drainage system very similar to ones we see in neighborhoods back home. One of the most innovative aspects was the usage of small fragments of travertine scattered within the cobblestone roads. Travertine is a rock material with reflective qualities allowing it to help show the way when people were using torches and traveling in the dark. There were even raised crossroads to allow pedestrians to cross the street while allowing for animals and carriage wheels to fit in the spaces between stepping stones.

Michaela spent a bit of time explaining the processes of body preservation as we looked at shelves of pottery and two separate glass cases containing the figures of a struggling dog and a small toddler. While archaeologists were excavating they found that the bones remained, but the rest of the body would decay into the ground over the 1700+ years. Due to this, they would pour plaster into the empty spaces where bodies used to lay. These teams of archaeologists were then able to create full skeletons of the bodies. They can even still extract DNA from the bones that they found from so many years ago.

We were able to look around an extremely well-preserved bath house. Like other ones we have seen it had separate rooms for a frigidarium, a tepedarium, and a caladarium, but we were actually able to see some of the traditional decor. As we continued to journey throughout the city, we came across old heating systems and an oven built into the bricks. Please enjoy Chloe’s excitement below:

Just before leaving Pompeii we were able to check out an ancient theater. We found out first hand that the acoustics were incredible. By that I mean that our own Jim Hangge, sang us a bit of Taylor Swift’s You Belong With Me from center stage. It truly was impressive how much sound carried in such a large open space. We must have been at least 22 steep rows up from the stage and could hear surprisingly well! Click here to view it for yourself!

Once our time in Pompeii came to an end we drove to the hotel to settle in. We then took a little trip out into the city of Naples to explore and shop around. We passed many street vendors with fun little trinkets and many restaurants with very alluring dishes. Instead of stopping for dinner during our little adventure, we drove to Toffini Academy and had the opportunity to take cooking lessons as a class. It was such a blast! In groups of two or three, we engineers decked out in aprons whipped up a delicious meal of basil-ricotta filled cannelloni and handmade meatballs baked in a decadent ragu sauce. What a treat! It was so fun to see everybody sharing meal that we all had a part in creating!

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