Pompeii

I wasn't sure what to expect from Pompeii – slightly jaded from Knossos, I was, of course, keen to make the journey and have a look, but I was prepared for another reconstructed curiosity, interesting but slightly kitsch. 


Pompeii is far from kitsch.


The second storeys of most of the houses are gone, but at street level, almost everything is preserved. Along the main streets, there are snack bars and bakeries – I could imagine the ancient equivalent of souvenir shops dotted between them. The villas are recognisably pleasure houses of the wealthy – the little pools, the rooms still decorated with luxurious, charming, sometimes naughty paintings. There are three theatres. The largest could seat 12,000 – half the town – and the smallest perhaps 100, a suitable space for literary readings or recitals.

Street Scene

Fresco, Villa of the Mysteries

Snack bar counter

The city from below

Pompeii's excavators found impression after impression in the ash, where bodies of the townspeople had lain and decayed. The ash has been removed – but the empty shapes of the population remain, caught in plaster. As we passed the first of the plaster casts of the bodies, a guide said to his tour group, in accented English, 'they were in different positions, but all with their hands over their mouths'.


The ruins of Pompeii are astonishing and ghostly. It is a town that made a bargain with history – death and destruction in the world that it knew, but presence, real and human and touching, out into the ages.


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The next day, after visiting the site itself, I spent several hours at the Naples Archeological Museum.


I arrived in the afternoon, just before two, and wandered up to the first floor to look at the paintings and mosaics taken from Pompeii. There was a board pulled across that section of the museum, and a man in a uniform was just switching out the lights. He looked at me and then pointed at a sign – 'closed at 2pm'. The museum is open until seven, and so I had left it til last on my cultural tour of Naples, as the churches I also wanted to visit tended to close earlier. Behind the board blocking my way I could make out the dim shapes of the frescoes.


For the first time on this trip I felt truly frustrated. So damn close. Not only did I really want to 'colour in' my mental images of Pompeii, but this is also the place where the famous mosaic of Alexander and Darius is kept, which, (as those of you who know the story of 'Project Alexander' will understand), I had a peculiar desire to see.


I looked sadly at my museum brochure (only in Italian). Then I looked again at the pages from my guidebook. Then I smiled. The fresco section was, for unknown reasons, closed for the afternoon, but the mosaics were on the next floor down, and open.


Of all the art and artifacts I have seen on this trip, the Pompeii mosaics are closest to my heart. It is partly their beauty, but also I think, the way in which they blend the visible craft of their making – the thousands of tiny stones pieces, so carefully placed – with the charm and lightness. And then there's the fact that they deal in food, sweet animals, myths and sex – all things I am strongly in favour of (No, not all at the same time. Calm down).