Pompeii and Herculaneum

27 November 2023 – Straits of Messina, Italy

After leaving Rome, we sailed all day to the island of Ponza and arrived in the evening. It looked like a pretty small town, with whitewashed stone houses lining the waterfront and climbing up the nearby hill. The next morning when we saw it in daylight, we realized that the houses were actually painted in different pastel colours.

Ponza, Italy

From there, we sailed to the island of Ischia, also arriving in the dark - this has been a theme of ours lately due to long distances combined with the sun setting at 4:30. We anchored beside the town, directly under a medieval fort built on top of a cliff. Jonas had caught a bluefin tuna and a squid earlier that day, which we ate for dinner. The next morning in daylight, we walked through the fort which had multiple chapels, a jail, and a tomb for the nuns who had once lived there, to name a few.  It now seems to be used for art exhibits and artists’ studios.

Medieval fort – Ischia, Italy

We stayed in the town of Castellamare di Stabia for the following two days in order to visit the ancient Roman sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum, short train rides away. Both towns were buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, preserving them and protecting them from looting until they were rediscovered. We went to Pompeii first, which is the bigger of the two and had up to 20,000 inhabitants. Even though we arrived shortly after it opened and just made it out just before the site closed in the evening, we still didn’t see all of it. I wasn’t expecting the town to be so well preserved; we could walk along the original roads lined with buildings that would once have been shops and houses, and it almost felt like walking through an actual town.

Pompeii, Italy

House of the Dioscuri – Pompeii, Italy

Fresco in House of the Orchard – Pompeii, Italy

My favourite part was the frescoes on the walls, many of which are still vividly coloured and mostly intact. The painting in the Villa dei Misteri, spanning from the floor to the ceiling along the walls of one of the rooms, was my favourite; it depicts an initiation ceremony into the cult of Bacchus. We also saw many beautiful mosaics including one in the entrance hall to a home that was of a giant dog and read “cave canem,” or “beware of dog”.

Mosaic at the entrance to the House of the Tragic Poet – Pompeii, Italy

It was also really interesting to walk through the thermopolia, ancient Roman fast food places with clay jars that would once have been filled with food set into the front counter.

Thermopolium – Pompeii, Italy

Herculaneum is smaller but better preserved than Pompeii. It is located closer to the volcano, meaning that it was buried deeper after the eruption, giving it better protection from looters. In addition, the wind on the day of the eruption blew the rocks from the explosion away from Herculaneum, sparing it from some of the destruction before being buried. Some of the second stories of the buildings were still intact and the original wooden beams were still present in places.

Hall of the Augustales; the remains of the original wooden beams can be seen in the grid pattern on the right wall – Herculaneum, Italy

In one house, nearly an entire wooden sliding door was still standing. The men’s baths were particularly well preserved; a hole in the wall revealed a gap between the walls that would have allowed hot air to surround the room and heat it. We also saw a beautiful shrine to the Lares (household guardian spirits) made of bright blue tiles and seashells depicting Neptune, god of the sea, and his wife Amphitrite. 

Our next destination was Agropoli, and from there we sailed to Matarea. The last two hours of that journey were spent beating upwind into thirty-five knots because Matarea was slightly inland from our usual route. We would have preferred not to go there because it was a bit out of our way, but when we tried to head into a nearby harbour that was on our route we ran aground, so we had to abandon that idea. Luckily we only lightly ran into sand and nothing was damaged.

Matarea is known for its twenty-one metre high statue of Jesus situated on the hill overlooking the town, and as we were struggling upwind towards it we got a good view of him on the hill, facing towards us with his arms out. It was especially dramatic because he is made of white marble and the sky behind him was a dark grey from the squalls passing through. Apparently he’s the fifth largest Jesus statue in the world and the third largest in Europe. 

Statue of Christ the Redeemer – Matarea, Italy

We then sailed to Tropea and climbed up a long flight of stairs to the old town on top of the hill. We were pleasantly surprised by the festive Christmas atmosphere that greeted us in the old town, with elaborate decorative lights hanging from the lampposts and lining the streets. It has been chilly recently so it felt even more like Christmas.

Tropea, Italy

The coast has been beautiful this whole way, with jagged snowcapped mountains and little towns dotted along it. Since leaving Castellamare di Stabia, we have been doing long days heading towards the Straits of Messina between Sicily and mainland Italy, the place where the sea monsters Charybdis and Scylla tormented sailors according to Greek mythology. Fingers crossed that we won’t run into them. From there we will do a passage to Greece.