Grant Gregory – Senior Electrical

Today started bright and early with a bus ride to Naples, Italy. Just outside Naples is the ancient city of Pompeii. Pompeii is very well known and famous because of the disastrous destruction of the city in 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius exploded showering the city below in flaming rock and meters of ash. We started our tour in the ancient Greek style outdoor theater. Pompeii has three outdoor theaters each of a different style. The Greek one is the smallest and the oldest style being a single row of seats and rather small capacity.  Much of this theater is preserved and still intact today. This ancient Greek style theater is not in use or open to the public to view. From there we went to the more modern Roman style amphitheater. This theater is the half circle style outdoor theater that we think of today as an amphitheater. This style boast several improvements over the Greek style in that it has two levels of seating so its capacity is much higher. It also has been designed in such a way that actors speaking toward the audience have their voice bounce of off the hard stone and amplified. This allows the whole audience to hear the actors even if the actors speak in a normal tone. The final style of theater is the full Roman amphitheater. We unfortunately did not have time to see this one. It is a smaller version of the famous Roman Coliseum. It is a full oblong shaped theater with a huge amount of seating and retractable roof for rainy days.

 

Below is the Half Roman style theater: