Address: Italy, near Naples
Date of death of the city: 79 years old
Coordinates: 40 ° 44'59.8 "N 14 ° 29'10.5" E
Content:
Short description
On August 24, 79, in the Roman city of Pompeii, houses shook from an earthquake. The earth shook and cracked, the sea stirred. An ominous rumble was heard.
Pompeii from a bird's eye view
In the bowels of the earth, such deep abysses were formed that a sheep herd of 600 heads fell into one of them. So Vesuvius began to wake up - one of the most formidable volcanoes on the planet. A black cloud enveloped the sky, covering the sun, and day turned into night. The top of the volcano split into two parts, columns of black smoke and huge tongues of fire rose from the vent.
Ashes and pieces of pumice fell from the sky as if from a gigantic weapon. Streams of rain pouring down from the cloud turned the ash into liquid mud. And the next day, lava flowed along the slopes of Vesuvius, flooding the surroundings, and a tsunami raged. The eruption of unprecedented strength lasted about 18 hours. The ashes even reached Egypt and Syria. The city of Pompeii and 20 thousand of its inhabitants were buried under a three-meter layer of volcanic rocks.
On the streets of the city
Among the dead was Pliny the Elder, a famous erudite writer. Driven by scientific interest, he approached Vesuvius by boat and found himself near one of the centers of the disaster. Pliny tried to calm people down, advising them to tie pillows on their heads with towels and flee from Pompeii. 1750 years later, the death of the once prosperous Roman city was immortalized on the canvas by Karl Bryullov. In the painting "The Last Day of Pompeii" the Russian painter managed to convey the tragedy of the doomed people.
Pompeii - a victim of the fire element
Before painting the picture, K. Bryullov collected a lot of historical material. He visited the ruins of Pompeii, examined houses in detail and made a number of sketches - a landscape, ruins, petrified bodies of people. So, the image of a woman with a floundering child reproduces the poses of the excavated casts, as Bryullov saw them in the Neapolitan museum.
big theater
Scientists have managed to reconstruct the death postures of victims of the eruption. In place of the decomposed body, voids were formed, and by filling these cavities with plaster, you can accurately recreate the last movement of the dying person. Pompeii is a vivid example of how a raging element can stop a measuredly flowing life and, like a camera, capture the horror of the last moment. The rich of Pompeii died with sacks of gold over their shoulders, and the beggars froze in the pose of supplicants.
Traditionally, it was believed that the death of the Pompeians was long and painful: inhaling vapors of poisonous gases, people died from suffocation. But recently, a group of Naples volcanologists put forward a new version - the inhabitants of Pompeii were instantly destroyed by a pyroclastic flow with a temperature of 100 - 500 ° C. Gas and ash moving at a speed of 100 km / h turned wooden objects into coal.
Temple of Apollo
The bread in Modest's bakery was charred and was found by archaeologists almost 2,000 years later. The method of casting with plaster helped to restore not only hundreds of human bodies and animals, but even vegetables and fruits.
Pompeii - a city that has risen from time immemorial
The ashes of Vesuvius reliably sealed Pompeii, keeping them almost intact for two thousand years. Excavation began in 1748 and continues to this day... Before the gaze of amazed explorers, the ancient city appeared in all its splendor. All the main structures typical of the ancient Roman culture were found here. In the center of Pompeii, there is the Roman Forum, where administrative and religious buildings, a covered market, a basilica and the Temple of Jupiter with two triumphal arches are concentrated.
Temple of Jupiter
There were two theaters in the city: musical performances and comedies were staged in a covered odeon, and wild animals and gladiators competed on the stage of the amphitheater. On the territory of the ancient Roman complex, antique baths, reservoirs for fountains, a large number of residential, public buildings and shops, named after individual events, gods or personalities, have been preserved.
Thus, in the garden near the House of the Perfumer, plants were grown for the manufacture of perfumes and fragrant oils. In the house of Pinarius Ceriale, which belonged to the jeweler, hundreds of precious stones were found, and in the House of the Surgeon - numerous surgical instruments. Wealthy townspeople decorated their homes with luxurious frescoes and mosaics.
Arch of Caligula
For example, in the House of the Tragic Poet, scenes from Greek mythology are immortalized on fresco paintings, and wall paintings in the Villa of the Mysteries illustrate the rite of initiation into the Dionysian sacraments. No less beautiful is the House of Gilded Cupids with a covered colonnade decorated with paintings based on Greek myths. In the aristocratic house of the Faun, the floor is covered with a mosaic depicting the battle of Alexander the Great and Darius III at Issus. Even the pools in the suburban baths are decorated with frescoes on the theme of "water" - waterfalls, mountain caves, etc. As in any Roman city, a lupanarium functioned in Pompeii. The erotic drawings adorning the walls of the lupanarium served as a kind of advertisement for the services of the "priestesses of love". Their services cost about 8 times more than one serving of wine.
Temple of Vespasian
On this occasion, the Russian TV presenter Boris Oskarovich Burda aptly joked: "If the gods punished Pompeii for licentiousness, then soon nothing will remain of us at all." And scientists argue that "Kara" is not far off: powerful eruptions of Vesuvius, comparable in strength to the 79-year disaster, occur once every 2000 years.
