Pompei, a city that was buried under volcanic ash!

Ruins of Temple of Jupiter and Mt Vesuvius in the backdrop

9KM from the busy city of Naples stands high is the Mt Vesuvius volcano! The most popular to have buried the Roman city of Pompeii in AD 79. It seems it spewed 1.5 milion tons of volcanish ash and molten rock per second releasing unthinkable amount of thermal energy killing 16,000 people! Well, even now it is considered to be one of the most dangerous volcano looking at the busy city Naples in the shadow it.

Colonnades of buried Roman city

Once a busy and beautiful city Pompeii was buried under 5m of volcanic ash, now it one of the most popular tourist attractions in Italy! Pompeii was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997 and gets more than 2 million visitors every year! Well, there is a lot to see and understand if you are into history and archaeology. Not all sites are open for public but whatever is open is quite a lot! 

Replica of a buried body

The city must have been very impressive in its golden days. It has an amphitheater, several temples, mansions, market etc. All these artifacts were well preserved for more than two thousand years because of the sterile ash which didn't allow any air and moisture underneath. I heard from the guide that the deterioration was nil during those 2,000 years but after the excavation the site has undergone so much of damage due to natural forces and much more due to humans!

Pompeii and no mention of limoncello?! Well, without tasting this drink trip to Pompeii is incomplete! It is made of the zest of the Sorrento lemons. These lemons are too big! There are many touristy limoncello stores at the entrance of the Pompeii site. I bought a small bottle as a souvenir :) Later in the restaurant I tasted it chilled after dinner, the theory is for better digestion!

Look forward for few more posts on Italy soon ...

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Scrapbook- A Travel Blog by Kusum Sanu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.