Note: This post is based on notes I made on April 2, 2007 in Pompeii and Naples.

Pompeii is one of those places that by right really shouldn’t exist. The city was lost to the Romans in 79 BC and forgotten by the world until the mid-18th century. Covered in yards of ash, the city lay completely preserved until the advent of modern archeology. We know more about life in the empire because of Pompeii than any other place that has been excavated to date. Today’s Pompeii adjoins the modern city of Naples, which itself stands in the shadow of Vesuvius. The city itself is remarkable… homes, businesses, and temples all still stand and aside from the roofs which burned off or collapsed in the ash fall look as though ready for their owners, patrons, and priests to return.

We clean up after natural disasters; rebuild after hurricanes and clear away the rubble from earthquakes. New Orleans, one of America’s great port cities, was decimated by a hurricane. Whole sections of the city were lost. Pompeii, on the other hand, would be more akin to the storm surge sweeping ashore and the water never receding back into the Gulf. There are physical reminders of the people of Pompeii; plaster casts made from the void left where they fell on the street in a futile effort to flee. More poignant are those who knew their fate and cowered in a corner to await the inevitable.

The site of Pompeii is huge and two hours is hardly enough time to really take in the magnitude of the city. At every intersection streets stretch away as far as the eye can see and in the distance there is always the clouded shadow of the mountain. Waking up every morning the people of Naples must look up and wonder “is today the day?”