Adventures in Italy: Day 12 Herculaneum, Naples, Sorrento

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Italy Day 12, Saturday, October 15, Ercolano, Herculaneum, Naples Archaeological Museum

Many of us took an optional tour to Herculaneum and the Naples Archaeological Museum. We left early in the morning for the Herculaneum ruins, in order to avoid the expected mass of tour groups. Pompeii sees about 50,000 tourists a day from tours like ours as well as tours from cruise ships. Herculaneum is much less popular but still we needed to be ahead of the crowd to have an opportunity to see the ruins more or less unobstructed.

Passing Mt Vesuvius, the only active volcano in mainland Europe, we were reminded that it is a dormant volcano. Each region surrounding Vesuvius is constantly monitoring for seismic activity indicating a possible eruption, very important to the roughly 500,000 people who live in this danger zone. There are two basic kinds of eruptions, effusive with flowing hot lava, and explosive where magma is torn apart as it rises, producing pyroclasts.. The last one in 1944 was not an explosive one giving some to believe that the next eruption could be explosive and very dangerous. After the eruption the coastline changed and the area once a beach lined with boathouses is now facing an enormous wall of mud separating them from the sea. People tried to escape by boat but sadly some 300 people are known to have died here, maybe more. The hard tuffa from the ash has made this area more difficult to excavate than Pompeii but they hope to begin more excavation soon.

We arrived early, before the other tourists, in the town of Ercolano to see the ruins of Herculaneum, lost in the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79 A.D. It took nearly 1700 years to discover that this ancient city lay beneath the foundations of the new city of Ercolano. Official excavations began in 1738 but it wasn’t until 1981 that the boathouse was discovered and with it the hundreds of skeletons who perished therein.

Walking into the remains of this ancient city I felt like an intruder in a private, ghostly paralyzed life. Herculaneum, based on the demigod Hercules, who allegedly founded the city, was once a very wealthy and important seaside town, summer home of nobles and important dignitaries of the time. Their homes were constructed with a combination of marble and terra-cotta and were lavishly decorated with colorful frescoes, paintings and tiles. The floors were done in mosaic designs created from millions of black marble chips with little pieces of white, which were more expensive. Private formal gardens were found in interior rooms of the rich.

Unlike Pompeii where so much heavy ash fell and collapsed roofs and walls, in Herculaneum there was less ash but more mud leaving more historical remains to be analyzed. We saw the remains of carbonized beams, yet surprisingly, many colorful frescoes survived the fires. Walking down the streets one could imagine local people having a midday meal at the tabernas or going to the gym or spas. The slaves, not surprisingly, got the dirty work of washing and cleaning. All was not as wonderful as it seemed though, there were no sewers until Emperor Augustus so Pompeii and Herculaneum stunk because urine flowed freely in the drains along the streets. Surprisingly urine was used for cleaning clothes in their laundries and, although this is hard to believe, urine was taxed because of its use.

Leaving the ancient city we walked down to La Terrazza Di Marco Nonio Balbo, where one of the most important residents of Herculaneum, Marco Nonio Balbo, had built a palatial estate overlooking the sea. His estate was destroyed but we were able to walk on the remains of his once beautiful terrace at the edge of the sea. The sea is now obstructed by a huge wall of mud and acres of dirt that now separates this coastal town from the sea.

The size of this wall clearly indicates how many hundreds of feet of ash and tuffa were needed to be excavated to reveal this part of the ancient city, 75% of which still lies beneath 60 feet of volcanic ash and mud. Sadly we were able to see the remains of some of the 300 skeletons desperately tucked inside the boathouses trying to survive the gas and horrors of the volcano. A few wooden boats remained reminding us of the access to the sea. Several of us photographed those poor skeletal remains with feelings of horror, sadness and intrusion into their private agonies.

The haze came and went often giving light and fog to augment my photographs. Just as I left I was able to photograph the city in bright sunlight that cast shadows giving a sharper, less muddy aspect with Mt Vesuvius lurking in the fog watching over the devastation and waiting for the next blow.

Priceless marble and bronze statues as well as numerous artifacts have been taken from this site to reside in the Naples Archaeological Museum, the most important Museum in the world for Roman artifacts, our next destination.

Along the highway towards Naples we see the sorry shanties built from the remains of corrugated steel, wood and any other found materials put together to form a semblance of a home. Some were more meager than others but I did see a few TV dishes helping to take people out of their horrible lifestyle in this crowded city where one million people call home. In the “rural” areas just outside the city we saw greenhouses crammed into residential areas making use of every available space. A mixture of very rich and very poor people live here as became evident on the drive into the city. Ben told us it is now very expensive to live in Naples, this city of contradictions, that is becoming an important place known for its art and culture. He also told us that Naples has the most beautiful subway in the world. Each station is designed by a famous artist or architect. Naples had a bad reputation as the most dangerous city in Italy but, Ben says, “only about 30 some people were killed last year. The mafia can get guns but ‘only kill each other’. Guns other than for hunting are nearly impossible to get.” I feel better now. Ben told us it is becoming safe which encourages more tourists to discover this ancient seaport town.

Naples is one of the most ancient cities in Europe. Ben proudly pointed out the beautiful and renowned Teatro di San Carlo, the oldest opera house in Italy. The summer palaces of the Bourbon nobility are surely a contrast from the current poor shanties reflecting the current poverty of Naples. The Bourbon kings had built a deep tunnel as an egress to protect them from the ‘plebeians’. Every noble family had their own church, I’m sure not wanting to rub noses with those ‘plebeians’. Ben said there is a Spanish section in Naples where the Spanish militia lived.

We soon arrived at the famous Archaeological Museum of Naples, home to more baroque art than anywhere in the world and some of the world’s finest collections of Graeco-Roman artifacts. This museum was one of the first of its kind to be built in Europe. In the 1750s, Charles of Bourbon founded the museum housed in the Palazzo Capodimonte, a former Bourbon palace. The main attraction is the Farnese Collection including the famous Treasure of the Magnificent and the impressive Toro Farnese in the Gallery of the Farnese Bull. The museum also features the best examples of art taken from the ruins of Pompeii. There is an impressive and lovely Mosaic Collection from the Casa del Fauno. Among them a mosaic of an elegant woman representing the wealth and nobility of the residents of Pompeii. The very impressive Grand Battle of Alexander mosaic covers an entire wall, probably from the 2nd century BC. This work showed shading, depth and perspective, an art style lost and not relearned until the Renaissance, 1500 years later. The Cave caneum (beware of the dog) mosaic looked playful.

These beautiful mosaics hang near the Secret Cabinet or Gabinetto Segreto, where the Bourbon Monarchy kept their extensive collection of erotic or sexual items (taken from the ruins of Pompeii) under lock and key. These rooms are reserved for “persons of mature age and known morals”. Some of the “art” in this room is quite beautiful while other pieces are comical. The beautiful Venus, Patron Goddess of Pompeii, is a lovely, realistic fresco featured here. I particularly liked the Three Graces but it was so dark in here I had a difficult time photographing everything with my little camera. Should have brought my “big guy camera”. Some memorable photos that were not clear were of a fresco of a lusty fawn uncovering a 'beautiful woman' who is actually a hermaphrodite. There are a lot of comical exaggerated penises but one in particular was used as an advertisement on the roads in Pompeii indicating a house of ill repute.

I continued to walk through many other rooms to look at paintings and sculptures depicting mythological stories or events of the time. One object specifically caught my eye: the glass vials used to collect tears at funerals. Women were paid to cry then collected the tears in vials later to spread on the graves. It seemed a bit ironic that there were many frescoes honoring Vesuvius at its original height of 10,000 ft before its eruption and devastation.

We were informed that there are many good restaurants and lots of antique shops in Naples. We had lunch at Cantanapoli Ristorante Pizzeria, at tiny restaurant in the older section of Naples. The location was convenient, the food unremarkable, and sadly no opportunity to taste the famous Neapolitan Pizza, but what made the restaurant particularly fun was when a woman discovered her husband and his lover having lunch there. Dishes went crashing to the floor amidst lots of Italian screams and protests until the wife was summarily thrown out of the restaurant. We had a dose of local soap opera Naples style.

After lunch we took a walking tour of this city, Ben’s home town. Naples is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, despite the fact that it was the most bombed Italian city in WWII. The ancient historic city center, established by the Greeks in 470 BC, is the largest in Europe and listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Spaccanapoli is the narrow main street separating the old historic center from the modern Naples. Naples is the birthplace of the original wood fired Neapolitan pizza. Ben told us there is a family in Naples who sells pizza by the meter and have become rich and famous as a result. Unfortunately we had already eaten, maybe another time. We had a lovely walk to the city’s waterfront reminding us what an exciting place this must have been when Naples was a thriving global cultural center and its port one of the most important in Europe. I can see why it inspired the song Santa Lucia.

The train station in the center of Naples is opposite a central mall in the original town square or piazza dedicated to the incorrigible Giuseppe Garibaldi. Ben told us that Garibaldi was a horrible dictator from Naples who stole money from the banks and closed all the schools for five years yet somehow he is memorialized throughout Naples. There are no high speed trains here largely because money dedicated to improve travel and infrastructure was diverted into the pockets of the Cammora, Naples’ ruling “Mafia style” government. The train takes an hour to get to Rome but their time schedules are erratic and are often late sometimes by as much as an hour. Maybe this is karma for Garibaldi’s bad reputation but it sadly affects the economy of this region. There is so much corruption here, particularly in the Mezzogiorno region, that is in a large part, responsible for Naples having one of the highest unemployment rates in Italy. There are many immigrants loitering around the train station but Ben says, “not as many as in the north”.

We drove past the Castle Nuovo or Maschio Angioino overlooking the oldest ship yard in Europe and the Bay of Naples. Sadly it was a fly by with no stop to photograph except through the bus window and because of this we had little time to take in the impact of this architecture on the city as it is now. We heard there was an important Futball game between Rome and Naples tonight but that did not entice the group to stay.

On the hour long drive back to Sorrento we passed by the village of Granano where Ben says are the best and oldest pasta factories. People buy their pasta from here for special occasions. Today was not a special occasion.

Driving back through the crowded agricultural growing fields amidst tightly packed apartment dwellings in the outskirts of Naples, I began to feel the heartbeat of this part of Italy. But I wondered how Michelangelo would feel if he saw reproductions of his David as backyard ornaments.

Dave had picked up a nasty cough and cold on the airplane to Italy and I don’t think he was alone. By midweek in Tuscany Dave was sick and hacking away (along with a nasty stye in his eye requiring two doctor visits). On the bus back from Naples there was a veritable cacophony of coughs throughout the bus.

After a long day and weeks of too much food we decided to take it easy tonight. Under a full moon, several of us walked down to Sorrento’s bustling Piazza Tasso where we sat at the Fauno Bar to eat a light supper. The setting was perfect for people watching but the food was not the best. Among the four of us we had meat, cheese, boiled egg and tomato salads, rustic bean soups, but unfortunately when I ordered a “ham and cheese sandwich” I was brought bland cheese and ham on crustless white bread with French fries. When I asked the waiter about it he looked at me and told me he thought I wanted the foreign version, not the Italian bread with prosciutto and provolone. Sigh. After our dinner we found Mary and George at a cafe overlooking the Bay of Naples. Under a starlit sky we all ordered limoncellos and coffee before calling this day a job well done.

HOW TO PREPARE THE LIMONCELLO

1 Liter Alcohol for liquor
6 Lemons
400 g. Sugar
6 small leaves of cedrinum herb
1/2 Liter of water

Cut the outer skin of the lemons and place with the herbs and alcohol in a covered jar to brew for 7 days. When done, strain liquid through muslin cloth. Simmer water and sugar for 5 mins. When cooled, combine with infused mixture. Let rest for a week, strain again and enjoy.

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Photos

La Terrazza Di Marco Nonio Balbo, Herculaneum, Ercolano, Italy
The 'hill of dirt' was created from the mud and ash left by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. This 'hill' separates the terrace, that was once on the edge of the sea, from the Bay of Naples.

The Grand Battle of Alexander, Naples Archeological Museum
This is a small detail of an enormous and beautifully crafted mosaic.