The word "Pompeii" is known even to those who have never been to Italy in their life. It has long become a symbol of man's helplessness in front of the elemental power of nature. The death of a rich and populous Roman city buried under the ash of the Vesuvius volcano is one of the most spectacular disasters in human history. Thanks to the famous painting by Karl Bryullov "The Last Day of Pompeii", she appears as a bright tragic act from the classical theater, where people are like statues, and the elements are inevitable, like rock. Having visited Pompeii, you can touch another dimension of this story - more earthly and concrete.
Pompeii dates back to the 6th century BC. Legend claims that Hercules himself was their founder. In the 5th century, the sprawling port city on the shores of the Gulf of Naples became part of the Roman Empire. He was loved by the Roman nobility, who built many holiday villas here, flourished and grew rich. The geographical location of the city seemed extremely successful: the Via Appia road, passing through Pompeii, connected Rome with the southern part of the country. But Vesuvius was also nearby. August 24, A. D. 79 the volcano has awakened. A monstrous eruption in two days destroyed Pompeii and two nearby cities - Herculaneum and Stabia. More than two thousand inhabitants died in the rain of lava and ash in Pompeii alone.
The catastrophe served Pompeii a strange service, destroying a thriving city while preserving it for eternity. An 8-meter layer of ash "mothballed" Pompeii for many centuries, in order to at some point show the city in the very form in which it met its death. In the process of archaeological excavations that began in the 18th century, streets and houses, household artifacts and art objects were resurrected from oblivion. There was a story about the horror of the ancient tragedy, and about the everyday life that once raged here. The fate of Pompeii shocked the imagination of Europeans: real pilgrimages of scientists, artists, poets were arranged in the dead city.
This is not surprising: a trip to Pompeii is a true journey through time. Here you can see all the attributes of a reference Roman city: cobblestone pavements, streets with gutters, remains of a forum, porticoes with columns, the Bolshoi and Maly theaters, three city halls, numerous baths and, of course, temples dedicated to different gods - from Jupiter to Isis. But perhaps the strongest impression is made by the residential buildings with “speaking” names: the House of the Surgeon with the medical instruments found in it, the House of the Perfumer, the House of the Tragic Poet, the House of the Faun, the Villa of the Mysteries. As if their owners left them yesterday. However, people and animals did not disappear without a trace: casts from their bodies made by scientists can be seen in those places where death overtook the unfortunate. There is also an archaeological museum, which houses items found as a result of excavations.
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Today Pompeii is visited by more than 2.5 million tourists annually. Here, as nowhere else, you can feel the proximity of eternity and decay, beauty and decay. The delicate refinement of the frescoes in the walls of houses (they are compared with the paintings of Botticelli) is adjacent to the distorted poses of frozen bodies. And the silence of eternity reigns over everything, not broken even by the voices of visitors. And the silhouette of Vesuvius still towers over the city, as if recalling the fragility of this silence.