Few cities such as  Pompeii can have a so great and diffused fame, thanks to his architectonic characteristics and his archeological discoveries which create a touristic model without parallels by the ancient finds and ancient archeological areas.

Pompeii

Photo flickr.com - diplod

This city is situated in Campania, nearby Napoli and it’s so famous because it represents a fundamental  conjunction ring between ancient and modern story, an example of a civility so remote as that Roman one, that still can be visible behind our eyes,  such a reality in front of our view that neither a history book could never tell with that emotion and that simplicity , not with the same pathos that we can revive on our skin, step by step , getting in the depths of this ancient splendor proof.


Pompei after and before
Pompeii has an ancient story equal to Rome one, even though we can speak about real and true urbanization when it turns into a commercial crossroad, becoming a rich and lively city, always in the centre of trades given his position, strong for a quick development and for this reason important and famous, on the top of that  we can think that the famous poet Lucrezio, De Rerum Natura writer, was born here. 

On the other hand Pompeii loses all his riches and his valor tragically, after the catastrophic  eruption that will close the Pompeii first phase. Thanks to the Sanctuary of the Beata Vergine Maria del Rosario, Pompeii  could reborn for the second time: thanks to that sanctuary of the 1891, a new pilgrimage had seen Pompeii find again part of his attraction that was so clear in a distant époque, due to the Pink Floid presence, for their live concert in 1972. Even all this facts and the constant presence of millions and millions of tourists every year, only a few year ago, in 2004, Pompeii was recognized officially as city by the Republic  President  Ciampi.


The Vesuvio
In 79 a.c, the relief that all the people believed a mountain, it revealed to be a fearsome  volcano and, with ashes and lapillus, the Vesuvio volcano made disappeared Pompeii  under meters of ashes , lapillus and volcanic material, burring the city itself with most part of houses and inhabitants. Despite of the tragedy, there’ at least one positive element, in fact, thanks to that eruption ash and sediments , during the first archeological excavations ,  the experts saw as  those materials have preservated everything perfectly, holding unchanged even the people, entire buildings, letting to observe civility roman trace never found before.


Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger
All the informations regarding the Vesuvio eruption are reported in one letter written by Pliny the Younger, Pliny the Elder nephew, in which he tells to Tacito how the things happened and how his uncle himself was dead with the city. In 62 a.c  in fact, a huge earthquake caused the destruction of part of the city and during 79 a.c still there were  work for rebuild the buildings when suddenly on 24th August of the same yeas, Pliny the Elder saw a strange dark mass, like a cloud, coming from the Vesuvio and he decided to get near to observe the phenomenon. While he was near to the coast, on his ship, a sudden help request of his wife friend pushed him to reach the city, putting his life on risqué, while pumices, lapillus and gas was surrounding the city as a cloak, suffocating and covering all like gray snow.

Unfortunately, also Pliny the Elder died suffocated by gas, on the contrary, his nephew the Younger choose to stay on the ship to go on with his studies. Not only Pompeii but also Ercolano and Stabia were hit by that disaster, even though it’s really incredible notice how from that century until ‘800, thanks to lapillus and gas, all was kept conserved as a wax museum , keeping  unaltered every physic detail of the place.
 

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