Saturday 29th March 2008

Yes, I know that we have been to Pompeii and Herculanium before but it would have been a terrible waste to have driven passed that fascinating area without paying it a visit.
Before going on to Pompeii I wanted to stop at Sulfatara, which was on the route. A few years ago we went on a Bristol University Geology Study Tour to this area and this was one of the sites that we visited. Sulfatara, like Yellowstone Park in the USA, is a volcano but doesn't look anything like Vesuvius or any of the other archetypal cone shaped volcanoes. It is largely flat, its floor has areas of boiling mud (produced a few hundred metres below the surface at a temperature of 170 – 250°C) and around the edges there are many fumaroles issuing mineral rich vapours at 180°C. We walked around, smelling the sulphurous fumes, avoiding the scalding fumaroles, looking at the disused sauna building and inspecting the well where they took water and extracted alum from it. We watched the steam pouring out of the fumaroles scattered across the hillsides making it look as though they were on fire. It is a totally fascinating and awe-inspiring place.
The Romans believed that this was the home of Volcan, the god of fire, and it certainly is an strange place. The land of Sulfatara sits above a huge lake of magma (molten rock) and this moves, expands and contracts, causing the surrounding ground to rise and fall, an effect known as bradyseism. When we came with Bristol University, we visited the nearby, mistakenly named 'Temple of Serapis' at Pozzuoli, which was actually part of the Roman city market. The pillars on this building showed marks created by marine molluscs at various points up to one third of the height of the column. This proved that the water level had changed considerably over the years and this whole area had at one time since Roman times been covered by a few metres of water. At the time of that visit the area was dry and their had been a recent sudden rise in ground level (a few centimetres in a few months). This can be the prelude to an earthquake (there are frequent tremors here) or an eruption and the inhabitants of houses in that area had been evacuated. If there is an eruption, we will all know about it as, rather than spurting out lava, this type of volcano explodes in a catastrophic eruption throwing huge amounts of debris into the atmosphere. Eruptions of this type often result in massive climate change with dramatically lower summer temperatures and extremely cold winters causing extensive crop failures. If Sulfatara erupts, the local area will be devastated and large parts of Europe and beyond will suffer the consequences. Let us hope that it remains quiescent for many years to come. On that happy note, it is time to move on to that cheerful site of Pompeii.
Pompeii was overcome by a massive eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, killing many of its inhabitants and burying the whole town under many metres of volcanic ash. The people who were unable to escape were killed by the poisonous fumes or suffocated by the burning ash. Yes, a most cheerful site! Fortunately, when we arrived the sun was shining, it was warm and there were no earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. We arrived at the conveniently positioned, comfortable and very reasonably priced (€14.50 per day) site of Camping Spartacus in time for a quick lunch. The campsite is opposite the entrance to the site of Pompeii and we got there as soon as we could. It was still Italian Culture Week so we saved the €11 each that it would have cost us in entrance fees. The site is large but not as extensive as Ostia Antica and many of its streets and buildings are closed to the public. This means that it is possible to see all of the site in a reasonable length of time but we had still not seen everything three and a half hours later when the site closed. I could write a huge amount about Pompeii but it still could not describe the experience of seeing it – get there if you can! We thoroughly enjoyed seeing (again) the buildings, mosaics, frescos (especially in the House of Mysteries) and getting an insight into Roman city life in 79 AD.
Photos: The author testing the crust of Solfatara with a large rock – it is so thin here that when the stone hits the ground you can feel the vibrations some distance away; The lecturers from a North Wales college were cooking their students in the Bocca Grande, the largest of the fumaroles. I was disappointed, upon enquiring, that the lecturers didn't know how long to cook them for – I would suggest at 160°C (the temperature of the fumarole), 40 minutes per pound plus 40 minutes; The plaster cast of a man holding his nose against the fumes and dust; One of the frescos in the unnamed tomb in the Necropli de Porta Vesuvio.