A few weeks ago my parents asked me if I wanted to accompany them on a trip to Pompeii, and never one to turn down a free holiday I was glad to take them up on the offer. Being fairly ignorant on the subject, when I thought of Pompeii I pictured a small archaeological site with a few artifacts scattered about and the famous bodies buried in ash to be found around every corner. However, it soon transpired that my expectations were wrong. Firstly, Pompeii is huge; we spent nearly three hours wandering around the ruins, complete with amphitheatre, temples and a never-ending network of Roman streets, and astoundingly there is yet more buried under the grassy mounds of ash, as the Victorian archaeologists only got round to excavating half of it. Secondly, given that they are perhaps one of the most famous images associated with Pompeii, the ‘bodies’, which are actually manmade plaster molds of the spaces left in the ash where the corpses decomposed, were few and far between. Despite this, just seeing the two or three we did come across was enough to cement the feeling that we had somehow stepped back in time, an impression detracted only by the unrelenting swarms of tourists joining us on our perusal of the ruins.
Louise Phipps
Ss