Art Holiday to Pompeii
I am struck by how few travelers to Italy plan to see Pompeii , most preferring destinations north of Rome. It is true that Pompeii, an ancient Roman port city on the Bay of Naples, will take the traveler southward and possibly into a less predictable, more chaotic travel experience. The modern city is poor, seedy and overbuilt. And yet, this is perhaps the most fascinating archaeological site in the world -- a tall claim, I realize -- but where else can you visit a city stopped dead in time? When Mt. Vesuvius erupted in the year 79 it buried Pompeii and its inhabitants in over twenty feet of ash and molten lava, so quickly that plaster casts made from the cavities left by incinerated bodies capture people and animals in the last acts of crawling to safety. Buried also were temples, houses, gardens, and brothels -- the everyday workings of a port town -- and their vibrant artistic decorations in sculpture, fresco and mosaic.
Archaeological excavations at Pompeii began in the mid eighteenth-century, and today we might deplore some of their practices. Finds were often removed from their original settings to be remounted in museums -- for example, mosaics pried from courtyard floors, or frescoes detached from temple walls. For this reason, as compelling as Pompeii is as a sight in itself, the traveler is advised to couple it with a visit to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. If you wish to stay in the region rather than attempting long day trips from Rome, I recommend the isle of Capri or the Amalfi Coast -- particularly the idyllic town of Ravello, with its Villas Rufolo and Cimbrone overlooking the blue sea.
House of the Vettii
The House of the Vettii, home of two wealthy merchant brothers, is the best-preserved example of domestic architecture and interior wall painting in Pompeii. The house is centered upon an atrium, or rectangular hall open to the sky. Looking up, the traveler will see a great square-shaped hole in the roof fitted with terracotta pipes that conducted rainwater into the cistern in the floor below. This atrium opened the Roman house to light and air, illuminating and giving ventilation to the various smaller rooms that typically surround it.
Because this was a wealthy home, it also boasted a large garden adjacent to the atrium. The garden is no longer planted as in ancient Roman times, when it would have been perfumed and shaded by citrus and other trees. But the remains of its impressive fountains are still visible between the columns around its perimeter. You will see bronze and marble statues -- look for the lovely figure of a winged boy holding a duck, from whose mouth once jetted spurts of water. This water, brought to the garden via lead pipes, dripped from the statues into high marble basins, and from there flowed into a ground channel and out of the garden.
The interior of the house is richly decorated with fresco paintings. If you proceed into the smaller rooms off of the atrium, you will find, in one, delicately observed birds and fruit; in another, fish and lobster looking fresh enough to eat; and in another, miniature Cupids engaging in every sort of trade and antic, including one who rides a crab across black foaming waters. The frescoes are spirited and witty, but none so much so (at least to our modern eyes) as that which awaits the traveler on the wall of the narrow vestibule situated at the entrance to the house.
Here, you will see a fresco of the mythological figure of Priapus, renowned for his lustings after unsuspecting nymphs. Priapus is in the act of weighing his phallus -- which is simply enormous -- against a bag of coins, and seems satisfied with the result. The painting served as a kind of talisman to protect the fertility and prosperity of the Vettii household -- note also an abundant basket of fruit at Priapus' feet. The erect phallus was perhaps a particularly potent symbol in this household of two bachelor brothers, but it was not unusual in Pompeii. In other homes, for example, small terracotta plaques carved with the male organ were inset into walls to ensure the blessing of fecundity to all inside. As a visit to one of the surviving brothels in ancient Pompeii will attest, this was a culture with a healthy reverence for the physical pleasures of Italian life.
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