Over the weekend, Boomer and I decided to take a trip to southern
Italy. We visited an old ghost town that’s very famous. It’s located near
Naples. Can you guess what the town is called?
Our train left for Naples at about 7
pm, and it’s a 5 hour train ride, so we didn’t get there until midnight. It was
dark outside so we couldn’t look at the scenery, but we had the whole train
compartment to ourselves, so we were able to stretch out.
The next day we took another train, but this one only lasted about
15 minutes, and it took us to Pompeii!
Pompeii is a really interesting city,
and one of Earth’s most famous archeological sites. Pompeii is a ghost town. A
ghost town is a town that doesn’t have any people living in it anymore, so all
that’s left are ruins of the buildings.
Pompeii was an ancient Roman city
founded in 6th-7th BCE. It was a center of trade because
of its location along the Volturno River on the north, the Apennines and the
Sorrento peninsula to the east and south, and the Mediterranean Sea to the
west.
Many towns and villages liked to trade with Pompeii, and so it
became a very wealthy city. All of a sudden, in 62 CE, a terrible earthquake
hit Pompeii, ruining many of the buildings. The people had just finished
rebuilding and renovating the ruined buildings, when about 10 years later Mount
Vesuvius erupted. The city was hit by a gigantic cloud of poisonous gases, ash,
and stones that buried the buildings and people.
Ironically the people had about 3 days’
time to leave Pompeii before the volcano erupted. People could see smoke coming
out of the mountain. But many people refused to leave because they thought that
the gods were mad at them, so they stayed to pray. By the time the citizens of
Pompeii realized that they needed to leave, it was too late.
For more information about the history
of Pompeii, click here
Boomer’s favorite buildings
Boomer saw many interesting buildings
while walking in Pompeii, but he really liked the bathhouses.
He thought that it was really interesting that bathhouses were for
middle class and poor people. The rich people had their own private baths in
their houses.
The bathhouses were the modern equivalent
of spas. They even developed a way to heat the bathhouses by running heated
water through pipes in the wall.
The bathhouses had rooms for cold baths, lukewarm baths, and hot
baths. They also had changing rooms, and bathrooms. The fancy ones even
included gymnasiums and swimming pools!
They used to be decorated with
elaborate pictures and bright colors. If you want to see what the bathhouses used
to look like in the Roman Empire, check out Getty images and click here to play a game about Roman bathhouses
Roads
Boomer also thought that the roads in Pompeii were very interesting.
They were made with stones of different sizes, but all of the stones made a
flat surface to walk on. But at major road intersections (sort of like at
stoplights now) there were big stones that went across the street from sidewalk
to sidewalk.
This prevented the chariots from going too
fast, and allowed people to cross the street without stepping in water when it
flooded.
For more information about the roads in Pompeii, and Pompeii in
general you can read this article by Rick Steves here.
Boomer really liked visiting Pompeii,
and hopes that you enjoyed learning about some of the interesting things that
he saw.
No comments:
Post a Comment