You grow up in Italy. You own a motorcycle, enjoy travelling on it, and you are able to ride it anywhere in the country. History is your favorite subject in school and you live just three hours from the most famous and perhaps most important historical excavation ever made. So you ride south and take a peek. Not if you're me you don't; instead you wait 50 years to make your first trip to Pompeii. Well, at long last I can knock that off my list of things to do.
Giovanni and I took off on our respective motorcycles for two days away from the burdens of his family in Terni to cruise the famous Amalfi coast, south of Naples. As we pored over maps, we electronic illiterates, I made the case to see Pompeii, the Roman city buried in volcanic ash in the AD 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Giovanni was dubious, "we only have two days," he shrugged, but I was determined. My whole trip to Italy was only ten days long and I had already spent plenty visiting my sisters; Giovanni had been rounding up errant children who were failing exams or crashing their cars and we both needed a break from other people. 
I happened to pick a particularly wet and cold June to visit central Italy, with downpours every afternoon and temperatures in the evening dropping to around fifty degrees which made for some rather teeth chattering riding for this tropical motorcyclist. Giovanni suggested we ride south to seek the sun, a proposal I enthusiastically seconded. We rode like hell on the appropriately named Autostrada del Sole, Sunshine Freeway, which is rather less romantic than its name. It does wind through the hills of central Italy in an entirely charming way but the authorities have installed a whole panoply of electronic tracking devices to keep tabs on speeders (wot, me?). The older models are gray boxes parked at the side of the road with a warning sign which causes all traffic to slam on the brakes simultaneously to pass the autovelox at the regulation 80 miles per (130 km/h). The newer version are overhead cameras which measure average speeds between cameras set at intervals of about ten miles. Which is great if you stop for a quick lunch (prosciutto and mozzarella and asparagus risotto)...
...and a coffee of the espresso variety of course. On those stretches where we weren't stopping for lunch we took to ducking onto the emergency shoulder to pass the cameras as Giovanni had heard they couldn't photograph your passage and measure your speed along the shoulders...It is the Italian way, just as I had to relearn to lane split wildly and get used to cars that actually pulled over to allow us to pass on narrow winding roads. I love riding in Italy.
Giovanni the cardiologist is an inveterate smoker so we frequently get to stop and talk when we take our rides. He carried the luggage on his fully equipped R1200RT BMW while I tailed along on my minimalist, rented K1200R, wild machine of a reputed 170 horsepower and the ability to hit 60 miles per hour (100km/h) in less than three seconds from a standing start. It was quite a startling ride, let me tell you, smooth as anything but ready to leap forward with just the slightest twist of the wrist. We flew down the freeway at speeds I'd rather not mention, slowing dramatically to ride the shoulder past the overhead cameras. What a weird way to travel, a knight in armor afraid of ray guns...
You'd think I'm old enough to know better, gray beard and all. Like hell, I'm on vacation. Then we had to lane split an accident and watching Giovanni maneuver his massive saddlebags past lines of inching trucks gave me palpitations. Almost as much as my own efforts to crawl past the rows of tightly packed vehicles. jostling to get to the head of the five mile line. All this work got us to the sunshine of the Bay of Naples and we enjoyed every second of it. More of that later.
Giovanni and I took off on our respective motorcycles for two days away from the burdens of his family in Terni to cruise the famous Amalfi coast, south of Naples. As we pored over maps, we electronic illiterates, I made the case to see Pompeii, the Roman city buried in volcanic ash in the AD 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Giovanni was dubious, "we only have two days," he shrugged, but I was determined. My whole trip to Italy was only ten days long and I had already spent plenty visiting my sisters; Giovanni had been rounding up errant children who were failing exams or crashing their cars and we both needed a break from other people. I happened to pick a particularly wet and cold June to visit central Italy, with downpours every afternoon and temperatures in the evening dropping to around fifty degrees which made for some rather teeth chattering riding for this tropical motorcyclist. Giovanni suggested we ride south to seek the sun, a proposal I enthusiastically seconded. We rode like hell on the appropriately named Autostrada del Sole, Sunshine Freeway, which is rather less romantic than its name. It does wind through the hills of central Italy in an entirely charming way but the authorities have installed a whole panoply of electronic tracking devices to keep tabs on speeders (wot, me?). The older models are gray boxes parked at the side of the road with a warning sign which causes all traffic to slam on the brakes simultaneously to pass the autovelox at the regulation 80 miles per (130 km/h). The newer version are overhead cameras which measure average speeds between cameras set at intervals of about ten miles. Which is great if you stop for a quick lunch (prosciutto and mozzarella and asparagus risotto)......and a coffee of the espresso variety of course. On those stretches where we weren't stopping for lunch we took to ducking onto the emergency shoulder to pass the cameras as Giovanni had heard they couldn't photograph your passage and measure your speed along the shoulders...It is the Italian way, just as I had to relearn to lane split wildly and get used to cars that actually pulled over to allow us to pass on narrow winding roads. I love riding in Italy.Giovanni the cardiologist is an inveterate smoker so we frequently get to stop and talk when we take our rides. He carried the luggage on his fully equipped R1200RT BMW while I tailed along on my minimalist, rented K1200R, wild machine of a reputed 170 horsepower and the ability to hit 60 miles per hour (100km/h) in less than three seconds from a standing start. It was quite a startling ride, let me tell you, smooth as anything but ready to leap forward with just the slightest twist of the wrist. We flew down the freeway at speeds I'd rather not mention, slowing dramatically to ride the shoulder past the overhead cameras. What a weird way to travel, a knight in armor afraid of ray guns...You'd think I'm old enough to know better, gray beard and all. Like hell, I'm on vacation. Then we had to lane split an accident and watching Giovanni maneuver his massive saddlebags past lines of inching trucks gave me palpitations. Almost as much as my own efforts to crawl past the rows of tightly packed vehicles. jostling to get to the head of the five mile line. All this work got us to the sunshine of the Bay of Naples and we enjoyed every second of it. More of that later.
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Pompei was swamped by burning hot gases and a storm of ash and pumice that reputedly buried the city 35 feet deep, so suddenly that the city was preserved intact with many of its citizens entombed. Two thousand years later Pompeii is a perfect reconstruction of Roman life, with graffiti preserved on walls alongside business advertisements, and political slogans. There is such a wealth of architectural history to uncover the Italian government is overwhelmed and much of what was buried at Pompeii and surrounding cities is yet to be uncovered. I found my walk through the city every bit as fascinating as I had expected. Narrow alleys:
Wide streets (with raised sidewalks very similar to street designs I've seen across Central and South America):
We got to see extraordinary Roman villas (whose floor plans were reproduced at the old Getty Museum in Malibu), including one a guard unlocked for us as a favor. Giovanni the sweet talker has that effect on strangers. We got to wander on a private tour:
We saw household artifacts, including a mirror, still on the wall which in turn still shows its original decorations:
And crisp clean frescoes decorating the walls, as fresh as the day they were buried:
The state of chaos at Pompeii is exemplified by the fact that any villa not being worked on is open to the public, unsupervised. Visitors get to wander in and out at will, all streets are open except those closed off for safety reasons, and if you want to wander across a superb example of a two thousand year old Roman floor, go ahead, track sand and grit at will...I was amazed by the freedom we enjoyed and appalled by the cavalier lack of protection for these priceless artifacts:
Giovanni shrugged saying Italy has too many monuments to be able to take care of them all. Nevertheless he was as stunned by the living past as I was, and he had been here once before in his dim and distant past:
Pompeii has become a magnet for stray dogs who live happily amongst the ruins, taking their ease, ignoring passersby:
Romans kept dogs in their homes as well, as evidenced by a famous mosaic in an entrance way to a house in the city. This mosaic seems at risk to me, considering the rain puddle obliterating the words printed across it's base: cave canem, or "Beware of the Dog" a phrase any modern home owner can identify with!
There was so much in Pompeii to be seen, and we were lucky as it was June and the number of visitors was relatively small. I managed to get pictures of empty streets, and away from the stadium and forum and open air market we found empty streets and visitor-less vistas. It was enchanting.
We saw household artifacts, including a mirror, still on the wall which in turn still shows its original decorations:And crisp clean frescoes decorating the walls, as fresh as the day they were buried:The state of chaos at Pompeii is exemplified by the fact that any villa not being worked on is open to the public, unsupervised. Visitors get to wander in and out at will, all streets are open except those closed off for safety reasons, and if you want to wander across a superb example of a two thousand year old Roman floor, go ahead, track sand and grit at will...I was amazed by the freedom we enjoyed and appalled by the cavalier lack of protection for these priceless artifacts:Giovanni shrugged saying Italy has too many monuments to be able to take care of them all. Nevertheless he was as stunned by the living past as I was, and he had been here once before in his dim and distant past: Pompeii has become a magnet for stray dogs who live happily amongst the ruins, taking their ease, ignoring passersby:Romans kept dogs in their homes as well, as evidenced by a famous mosaic in an entrance way to a house in the city. This mosaic seems at risk to me, considering the rain puddle obliterating the words printed across it's base: cave canem, or "Beware of the Dog" a phrase any modern home owner can identify with!There was so much in Pompeii to be seen, and we were lucky as it was June and the number of visitors was relatively small. I managed to get pictures of empty streets, and away from the stadium and forum and open air market we found empty streets and visitor-less vistas. It was enchanting.
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Giovanni was determined to find Pompei's most famous house, the lupanare, or main brothel ( in a city that reportedly boasted about two dozen, most for locals located above taverns). The "wolf house," reputedly built to serve visitors to the city, had ten tiny little rooms with stone beds, apparently designed for short people to grovel on:
And around the walls in the main corridor the owner painted little frescoes to help remind the customers what they had come to the house to do:
I find it rather odd, to imagine the customer locked in the embrace of a prostitute, forced by failure of memory to hop off the (short) bed to duck out into the corridor to check one of the little scenes to help remind him what he's there to do. The Romans were humans too I guess, though forgetting how to ride a bicycle, as it were, seems excessive . They liked to eat out apparently as evidenced by the cafeterias lining the main shopping street:
The terracotta rings were filled with embers to keep plates of food warm for sale to passersby. We saw advertising on the walls, impossible to photograph owing to plastic sheets screwed over them to preserve them(at last!), as well preserved indeed as the day Romans walked by. There was a bakery:
And of course modern interference of the Italian state. Need electricity? No problem, screw a rusty support into the ancient Roman walls and run a wire:
I left Pompei after a short couple of hours, my head filled with the wonder of it all. And there at the Porta Marina I spotted some other lucky souls slipping in just before closing time to get their first glimpse of ancient Rome. And as they strode up the ramp to the arched gateway into the city I snapped a picture of them and those famous reds of Pompei, the frescoes as fresh and exposed to the weather as ever:
I left Pompei after a short couple of hours, my head filled with the wonder of it all. And there at the Porta Marina I spotted some other lucky souls slipping in just before closing time to get their first glimpse of ancient Rome. And as they strode up the ramp to the arched gateway into the city I snapped a picture of them and those famous reds of Pompei, the frescoes as fresh and exposed to the weather as ever:
Outside Pompei we avoided most of the touts selling all the crap you can imagine a tout would offer for sale outside the Roman city, though I did pick up a few wolfish souvenirs for my deadbeat colleagues at home, and we got back on our motorcycles and prepared to ride. The good old days were perfectly fine I'm sure but I just can't imagine how much money and effort it would have cost to house 170 horses. And here I was riding that many all by myself without a care in the world. I am an entirely modern man, when all's said and done.
