
The New Treasures of Pompeii - dangerman
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/new-treasures-pompeii-180972829/
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ggambetta
Pompeii is amazing, but Herculaneum[1] is just mind-blowing. They're maybe 30
minutes from each other, so it's possible to visit them on the same day if you
start early.

While Pompeii was covered in lava, Herculaneum was a bit further away from the
volcano, so it got covered in ash - and therefore it's much better preserved.

Herculaneum was kind of a beach resort for the Pompeii rich. It has luxurious
villas, the shops you'd expect, and a thermal bath that you could use today
and not notice is 2000 years old.

Same with the houses, and the city in general. There's something incredibly
familiar in them; I always get the feeling that we haven't invented much stuff
since the Romans.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculaneum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculaneum)

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retSava
Some travel sites recommends not visiting them both at the same day, since
Pompeii is very large, and walking on cobble stone is exhausting.

This piqued my interest, have you been to both? Do you have any general advice
or travel tips? Did you go up to the volcano peak, if so, do you think that
would be doable also for a small-ish child (~6-8 yo)?

Thanks!

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cmendel
So I was there about 5 months ago. I'll be honest, I'm in pretty good shape
and even still, Pompeii is way too much to do in a day. Herculaneum is
wonderful and very well preserved, but if you only had an afternoon you could
see it with some ease. Were I to do it again I'd likely spend one day in
Pompeii, one day in Herculaneum and on the slopes of Vesuvius, and at least a
day in Napoli proper. That would get everything in any respect, but would let
have a real sense of those couple sites.

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Triesault
I found this part to be extremely interesting.

> _Scratched lightly, but legibly, on an unfinished wall of a house that was
> being refurbished when the volcano blew is a banal notation in charcoal: “in
> [d]ulsit pro masumis esurit[ions],” which roughly translates as “he binged
> on food.” While not listing a year, the graffito, likely scrawled by a
> builder, cites “XVI K Nov”—the 16th day before the first of November on the
> ancient calendar, or October 17 on the modern one. That’s nearly two months
> after August 24, the fatal eruption’s official date, which originated with a
> letter by Pliny the Younger, an eyewitness to the catastrophe, to the Roman
> historian Tacitus 25 years later and transcribed over the centuries by
> monks._

> _Massimo Osanna, Pompeii’s general director and mastermind of the project,
> is convinced that the notation was idly doodled a week before the blast.
> “This spectacular find finally allows us to date, with confidence, the
> disaster,” he says. “It reinforces other clues pointing to an autumn
> eruption: unripe pomegranates, heavy clothing found on bodies, wood-burning
> braziers in homes, wine from the harvest in sealed jars. When you
> reconstruct the daily life of this vanished community, two months of
> difference are important. We now have the lost piece of a jigsaw puzzle.”_

Inscription: [https://thumbs-prod.si-
cdn.com/b-AKU2VJ_IfsLSz6vS4uxPtuRAQ=/...](https://thumbs-prod.si-
cdn.com/b-AKU2VJ_IfsLSz6vS4uxPtuRAQ=/fit-in/1072x0/https://public-media.si-
cdn.com/filer/e3/4b/e34bda47-c893-408b-9627-8e89a21bb921/sep2019_b01_pompeii.jpg)

I can picture the situation. A construction worker is annoyed because their
coworker is off eating and not helping construct a wall. The construction
worker vents their frustration by doodling on the unfinished wall. That doodle
lasts 2000 years and helps archeologists determine when Mount Vesuvius
eruption occurred.

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robotomir
Is the Getty Villa built at a 1:1 scale with the original? Because it's
impressively big.

