The train ride from Naples is: hot, sticky, cramped, smelling like sweat and engine grease. That day, the windows were open and I looked out at the rolling hills and bright plaster apartment complexes as they flew by. The train line is called the Circumvesuviana. It snakes its way through the province of Campania, hugging Mount Vesuvius on one side and the Mediterranean shore on the other. I caught it from Napoli Centrale very early, two hours before the archaeological site at Pompeii opened. I thought I was so smart and unique. The overwhelming human stench in the train carriage proved me wrong.

I’m lucky enough to have visited some impressive places in my time: ancient cities, hilltop fortresses, the world’s biggest and best museums. None of them compare to the circus that is Pompeii. You think to yourself: how can there be so many people? A Tuesday in May at 9am, but it seems like everyone in the country is here. The lines are hundreds of people deep. There are voices everywhere, bodies bumping unceremoniously against yours, even the odd tabarnak. The employees treat you as an inconvenience. There are posters everywhere with splashy graphics: a staged gladiator fight! A theatre run in the old ampitheatre! Russell Crowe performing live with his barbershop quartet…? (It’s on July 9th, if ever.)

Pass the lines, though, get through the turnstile. On the other side of them are dense trees and bushes. Walk less than a minute and find yourself in the ancient forum. Now the fun begins.

a little history

Mount Vesuvius has erupted many times - as recently as 1944! - but the 79 eruption was a particularly bad one. It covered Pompeii and Herculaneum in hot ash and lava. (Poor Herculaneans. We always talk about their neighbours.) Pompeii was a real good-time town, situated ideally in the Bay of Naples right up against the gorgeous turquoise of the Mediterranean. Wealthy Romans came here to gamble, watch men gore each other, swim, and generally just have a good time in the countryside. Lots of rich people also lived here year-round, funding the construction and maintenance of incredibly lavish, spacious, and well-decorated mansions. At the time of the eruption, Pomepii counted around 15,000 permanent inhabitants.

What makes Pompeii and Herculaneum so special? Nothing, really - they were nice towns with cool stuff, but so was just about every other town in the Empire at the time. No, what makes them special is that they were destroyed in a moment.

The cities were abandoned in a day. Many people saw the writing on the wall from all the smoke bellowing from the mouth of the mountain and fled in the days and hours before the final, deadly eruption. Most inhabitants of the city survived. But many did not: the optimists, yes, but also the ones who weren’t free to flee.

Those trapped in the city left behind overturned cups and bowls, dogs still chained to fences, gates flung open, precious heirlooms still buried under the floorboards. Some body cavities were found seeking shelter under collapsed archways and disentegrating staircases. The lava and ash created a literal snapshot of what life looked like in October of 79 CE. Everything came to a halt, preserved in the earth for antiquarians and archaeologists to come.

In archaeology, we call it the Pompeii premise.

a day at the site

The archaeological site of Pompeii covers 163 acres. That may not mean much to those of us who are not farmers, so let me frame it like this: I was walking non-stop for seven hours and only covered about 1/3 of the park. It’s massive. It is a literal town. New excavations take place daily, uncovering new villas and bakeries and gymnasiums.

It was a city similar to the cities of today: richer neighbourhoods and poorer ones, shops and restaurants on the ground floors of apartment complexes, water fountains for horses and people alike, raised sidewalks with large stones for crosswalks, main squares for meeting and shopping, and a big old ampitheatre for plays and fights. Everywhere you looked you would have seen vivid, eyecatching, and even gaudy works of art: elaborate household shrines, statues of emperors and nobles, colossal plaster murals in heartstopping shades of poppy red and aquamarine blue, tiled mosaics of mingling dolphins and gladiators... Vesuvius, always in the background, still frames the city’s landscape as an ancient onlooker.

I learned quickly that the undulating throngs of tour groups tend to stick to the same circuit, seeking only the most impressive big-ticket destinations in the city: the ancient baths, the brothel replete with graphic erotic artwork, the ampitheatre, and a few of the most famous villas. If you can avoid these areas, Pompeii is almost empty. After centuries of wear and tear + centuries of burial in hot ash + centuries of excavation work, the stone buildings of Pompeii all tend to really look the same from the outside: brown brick, largely unadorned. Naturally, no one is interested in walking down a street containing nothing but plain beige ruins with no sexy cool art inside of them. And, of course, 99% of the buildings in Pompeii are plain beige ruins with no sexy cool art inside of them. If you seek these places out, you’ve found your ticket to feeling alone in a big, dead city.

COOL SITES SPEEDRUN

Porta Ercolano and Necropolis
The path from the city to the Villa of the Mysteries is a special one. To begin, you get out your credit card and pay another 8 euros on top of the 20 you paid earlier that morning pass through the checkpoint between the city and the ancient harbour. Now, you are in one of the city’s several necropoli (nekros = dead; polis = city).

This one is special because it is the youngest cemetery in Pompeii - the one that was in use when Vesuvius blew her top. It contains burials from between 80ish BCE and 79 CE. The tomb monuments are breathtaking in scale and detail, towering way over your head as you walk your little stone path between them, down to where the boats would have been docking. The necropolis is special because it is quiet, much quieter than the rest of the site. The birdsong is louder here. The tourists don’t talk as much, and there are less of them. Maybe there’s something in our DNA, even today, that compels us to show quiet reverence in a graveyard.

Villa of the Mysteries
Definitely worth the 8 euros. This 1st c. BCE villa is way on the outskirts of town and magnificently preserved. The murals inside are considered to be some of the best-preserved Roman frescoes in existence. The colours are unbelievable - in that you literally can not believe they are 1900 years old. The detail is perfect, the lines bright and clean. Vivid purples and yellows pop out from tunics and pillowcases. Life-sized figures betray shock, fear, amusement, and excitement. The Room 5 mural wraps around three walls, enveloping you in rich art.

Why the name? If you ever read literature from the early Mediterranean world, the word mysteries comes up a lot. This isn’t a Sherlock Holmes thing; rather, mysteries refers to cults or religious groups whose beliefs and practices could only be revealed to those who took part in initiation rituals (or mystai). The frescoes from Room 5 of the Villa are thought to depict exactly that: the initiation ritual of a young woman into some religious cult (possibly Bacchic/Dionysian?) that we no longer know much about. Because these rituals and sects were so secretive, they wrote almost nothing down, meaning historians today have very little clue about what was going in them. Oh, well. Some mysteries should probably stay that way.

Food for charioteers on the go!
Drive-throughs and food stands are an exceptional invention, but they’re not recent ones. Counters had space for pots underneath which could be filled with different foods and heated. Some of these places probably had a bit of seating space, but you could just as easily grab a snack for the road.

Villas, villas, and more villas!
Look: there are too many villas to count in Pompeii, each with their own unique architectural features and interior design. As a general rule, these big houses are the ones containing the most elaborate art and which take up the most space, often laid out with huge courtyards, lush gardens, and even bathing pools. They also contain darker, smaller rooms, ones set aside for the indentured and enslaved people in captive service. One such room was located in a villa owned by two brothers, both businessmen. In their foyer, there’s a fresco of a jaunty man proudly showing off his enormous junk - classic frat boy art.

Cut to a room tucked away in the back of that stately home, white plaster walls decorated with miniature paintings of sex acts. The erotic art stands out to the viewer because it is one of the only instances of graphic art to be found outside of brothels in the city. People line up to take photos of these secret little deviant frescoes. Archaeologists posit that the room belonged to an enslaved girl whose owners forced her to entertain their guests for money. History can often be dark and upsetting because the choices made by human actors are often very dark and upsetting.

so what do you do with dark history? (+“disneyfication”)

A big discovery was made by archaeologists at Pompeii last year - maybe you heard about it? The archaeologists who found it called it the bakery-prison. In the old days, grinding flour on a large scale was a huge task: gigantic grindstones with wooden mechanisms propelled by people and animals to keep the mill moving. The one found in Pompeii last year painted a bleak picture: located underground, the bakery/mill had one small window fitted with iron bars that looked out into the room above - no daylight, and no escape. For hours at a time, donkeys and enslaved people walked in aimless circles hauling gigantic wooden beams until their feet and hands bled. No concept of day or night. No reprieve. All the while, the bakery owner could check in on the progress below through their little window.

Depending on where and when you found yourself in the Roman Empire, enslaved individuals made up anywhere from 5-20% of the population. Historians put Pompeii at the higher end of this estimate due to its importance as an economic hub. That’s the reality of Roman glory: by all means, marvel at the statues and monuments and buildings built by Roman hands, but understand that those hands had very little choice in the matter.

When the volcano blew, who stayed behind? Who couldn’t leave? Who was chained to a flour mill or locked in their bedroom?

I took no photos of the famous plaster-cast bodies. You can find them throughout the park, sheltered in little glass coffins. We can have that discussion, debate whether it’s ethical to have them out on display. I mean: imagine your death, a moment of total agony wherein your brain liquefies and your skin melts and your muscles contract and crumple. Imagine that it was the death of your loved one. Imagine their final moments splayed out at what is essentially an archaeological amusement park for everyone to gawk at, hands raised uselessly against crumbling stones and burning ash. Is it right?

Maybe there’s no answer. Maybe there is no right or wrong at all. Maybe looking at these plaster casts makes the bodies feel more human than any skeleton or mummy: you are coming face-to-face with someone’s final movements, and it’s hard not to feel a sharp punch of emotion. Maybe the connection that comes from witnessing that is important for visitors, for building empathy between past and present.

The term disneyfication gets thrown around a lot in archaeology and heritage studies. It has two main meanings for me: 1) rebuilding archaeological/heritage sites to reflect an idealized version of history, often with nationalist or capitalist desires in mind; and 2) to turn a site of historical significance into an attraction for visitors, full of amenities and offers. Pompeii is a site of great suffering, no doubt: not just because of the eruption, but also because anyone who was not an actual Roman citizen lived long, difficult lives over which they had very little control. How do you take all of that - a city’s worth of experiences - and make it into something digestible for the grand public?

It can also be hard, I agree, to look at streets upon streets upon streets of half-restored brick walls and not turn to boredom. That’s another struggle: how convenient and modern should the park be for visitors? Should they add roofs and doorways to the ruins to give us a better sense of what the buildings used to look like? Add street signs on every crossroads so we can better navigate the twists and turns? Should they add panels to every block explaining what the buildings were, who lived there, and what archaeologists have found? How easy and familiar should the ancient city be? Or should Pompeii speak for itself? Let people wander around mostly in mystery, letting them imagine lives and personas for the inhabitants of all the unmarked residential ruins? It seems to be a mix of both approaches: only the standout buildings get info panels. Everything else is left to the imagination.

If and when you visit Pompeii, I encourage you to walk the streets and try to invent some inhabitants. What were they called? What did they do? Where were they from? Who were they married to? What religion did they practice? What were they like?

Perhaps if Mont-Royal explodes tomorrow, some future tourist will do the same for you.

bonus: pro tips for acing pompeii

1. A stable internet connection is your enemy. Get a book with a map and download offline maps before you even leave your room

2. Get to Pompeii when it opens. It will still be busy, but nothing compared to even an hour or two post-opening

3. Get the arteCard Campania: based on the one you pick, it gives you a set number of entrances to heritage sites + museums in the region and free public transit for something like 40 euros

4. Go in the off-est season possible, like the winter. (Yes, it will still be a little busy)

5. Bring water; refill as you go at the aforementioned ancient water fountains. Snacks are also a good idea, but there’s a cafe near the forum if ever you need stuff

6. There is zero shade in the streets, plan accordingly

7. Book a tour if you want to get in and get out quick

8. The Circumvesuviana train is stuffy and cramped, but you can take it from Sorrento or Naples and it’s so cheap. (If you’re fancy, there’s also an air-conditioned one with seats that costs 15 euros one way.)

9. Bring the comfiest shoes you own, be so serious right now