Herculaneum: The Buried City, Part II (March 6, Cont'd)

So when I last left you all, Kee-Min and I were in the middle of Herculaneum.

I'm not sure that's the geometric middle, exactly.  But it's close enough.

We'd already toured through about half of the excavated site (described here, in case you  missed it), including the main commercial area of the city.  We were moving on toward the residential areas.  But first, Stanley begged for a photo with a giant fountain/tub thingamajig:

Now, let's take a peek into some of the houses.  In lieu of a grand entrance hall, most houses opened up into a main courtyard, like this:

Taken from the entrance.

That rectangular area in the center actually serves a purpose - to catch and collect rainwater.  A few close-ups from a different house will give you a better feel for this:

There is a central pool for collecting the water

And if you look up (in a house with an intact roof), you'll see this:

It's hard to tell, but the roof is actually angled down toward the center.  Rainwater flows inward,
toward the center (the anti-peak), and into the pool below.

To help you visualize this, Kee-Min was able to capture both the roof and floor in one photo:

What a clever way to conserve/recycle rain water!   As you can (sort-of) see in the photo above, all of the other rooms in the house were located just off this central courtyard.  These rooms included bedrooms, a room for dining, and a cooking area. Look closely, and you'll also see that the walls are painted.  Wall decoration was pretty important, even back in the AD 60s, and we saw plenty of painted walls and mosaics:

Painting

Mosaic

Mosaic

 Many of the more intricate mosaics have been removed from the site, and if you are one of those stalkers who memorizes the contents of our blog, you'll remember that we viewed those the previous day at the Museo Archeologico in Naples.

Speaking of tiling, there was plenty on the floor, too:

The majority of the rooms had some tiling - or at least, remnants of it.

Putting all of these pieces together: water collection, wall decorations, flooring:

And, of course, there was graffiti:

Ancient...

...and somewhat more modern.

Truly, though, despite one small bit of modern graffiti, Herculaneum provided a glimpse of life in ancient Italy, barely touched by the modern day.  We were extra-fortunate to enjoy beautiful weather and a virtually deserted excavation site. We saw one school group, and perhaps 10-12 other individuals the entire time we were there.  If you're considering a visit, I would suggest the following:

1. Go to Herculaneum.  Admittedly, we didn't visit Pompeii, and so cannot make a direct comparison.  But the Herculaneum site, although smaller, is supposed to be better excavated.  And the excavation is really quite astounding.  Herculaneum is also less crowded.
 
2. Rent the audio guide.  There is no time limit and, in fact, we were so thorough in listening to ours, that our first one ran out of batteries.   We easily exchanged for a fresh one, and spent another 3 hours wandering through the ruins.

3. Give yourself enough time.  We were hoping to do a double - Herculaneum AND Vesuvius, but we spent too long at Herculaneum to make this possible.  Get an early start at Herculaneum, or plan for a two day trip.

A glimpse of the photographer extraordinaire...

And the fruits of his labor:

Herculaneum in the foreground, the modern day city of Ercolano in the mid-ground,
and Vesuvius himself (itself?) in the background.

For the next post, Kee-Min will make a rare appearance as author, writing about our post-Herculaneum dinner adventure.  And after that, the details of our hike up Mt. Vesuvius!