With its thousand-year history, Pompeii, is one of the most important and visited archaeological sites in the world. It was destroyed and completely buried during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. And it was only accidentally unearthed in 1748, after the discovery of some remains of the city of Herculaneum 10 years earlier.
An eruption that of Vesuvius, violent, catastrophic that brought death and devastation throughout the ancient Roman city, which was invaded by more than 3 meters of volcanic material. About 2,000 Pompeians died overwhelmed by the ash, lapilli and powerful pyroclastic flow.
It was a terrible event that made us realize the full force of Mother Nature, but at the same time left us a precious and unprecedented heritage.
In fact, the unique state of preservation of the city of Pompeii has made it possible to reconstruct and discover the history, customs and remains of this ancient city buried by time.
Pompeii appears today as a crystallized city, as if time had stopped at that terrible day in 79 AD. Everything appears visible when visiting the ancient Roman city, houses, streets, paintings and even the petrified bodies of the people who died during the eruption.
And it is precisely these bodies that are one of the three things you will not see anywhere else in the world, but only by visiting the archaeological site of Pompeii.
In fact, the particular dynamics of the eruption and the study and techniques used by archaeologists have made it possible to unearth the intact bodies of the victims at the exact moment of death.
Casts, one of the things you can only see in Pompeii
The casts are one of the three unique and sensational things you can see when visiting the excavations of Pompeii. Only here can you admire the bodies of those who could not escape death and were overwhelmed by the incoming pyroclastic flow and the falling ash and lapilli. An exact photograph in short of the pain and terror carved on the faces of these human remains.
This important discovery dates back to the 1800s when archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli poured liquid chalk into the ground filling the voids left by the decomposed bodies of the victims.
A technique that made it possible to make the exact imprint of the victims of the eruption in the precise position they had assumed just before they died.
Everything is visible when admiring these bodies, the pain, the anguish, the heartbreak, the fear.
Bodies of men, women and children entwined in a final embrace before dying.
About a hundred casts were made by this method, of which 13 can be seen only in the famous garden of the fugitives. These are probably an entire family who tried in vain to escape the falling lapilli but were suddenly overwhelmed by the arrival of the pyroclastic flow.
Only here in Pompeii can you see these bodies. Even in the nearby city of Herculaneum, which was also buried during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., skeletons were preserved but not the bodies of the victims.
Only in Pompeii will you see the charred bread
Well yes, another thing you can only see by visiting the excavations of Pompeii is the charred bread found in one of the many ovens scattered around the city. It’s the oldest bread in history, a thousand-year-old bread, perfectly preserved , which gives us insight into the habits and life of the ancient Pompeians.
It is a charred round loaf, perfectly intact, defined by archaeologists as Panis Quadratus.
It has the typical round shape, like an ordinary modern-day loaf of bread, but it is incised on the surface forming 8 segments. And it is precisely for the making of these 8 segments that 4 square lines were made on the bread, hence the name Panis Quadratus.
There were about 30 ovens in Pompeii that made bread like this. And even today not only the ovens are clearly visible, but also the millstones used to process the grain.
The remarkable number of ovens scattered around the city gives us insight into how bread was a favorite food of ancient Pompeians. Although because of its unaffordable cost, it was probably only consumed by the very rich.
A typical Roman aqueduct
Strange but true, only in Pompeii will you be able to see a typical 2,000-year-old Roman aqueduct. Not just ancient pipes running around the city that fed water to homes. But also the place where water was collected to be distributed around the city, the Castellum Aquae.
The aqueduct in Pompeii was built by Augustus using lead pipes connected to the springs of Serino. Water that was piped right into the Castellum Aquae. Which was located at the highest point of the city and used the falling pressure of the water to distribute it to the houses and fountains of Pompeii. Ingenious indeed!
But not only that, in Pompeii you will also see towers placed in different corners of the city. Where in ancient times square cisterns were placed on top of them to collect the water that flowed from above the streets during intense periods of rain.
These towers, in the event of heavy rain, collected the water that flowed rapidly down the city streets. And by harnessing the latter’s pressure force, they would force it up through pipes to the inside of the cistern.
In this way, the collected water made it possible not only to reduce damage to the pipes located downstream, but also to supply the city with water.
