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Hotel Olimpico
Costa sur de Salerno,
Calle: Lago Trasimeno
84098 Pontecagnano
Tel. (+39) 089 203 004
Fax. (+39) 089 203 458




     Salerno - Italy local time: 18:42:44

Por qué el Hotel Olímpico para sus viajes de negocios


Bartolo Longo Basilica       Map of the ruins

Timetable                         Pompeii's map


Historical notes

Pompeii, with four fifths of its urban area already excavated, is the most famous and evocative archaeological site in the world.

The eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD buried the city in a 6-7 mt thick layer of ash and cinder. Most of its inhabitants, escaping from their homes, found their deaths on the shore. The remaining few, in a vain attempt to save themselves in their basements, died asphyxiated: the moulds of their agonized bodies, obtained by pouring plaster into the cavities left by the bodies in the layers of ash, give moving testimony to the tragedy.

A walk amongst the excavations of Pompeii is an unique experience. It is a jurney into the past: one captures the feeling of life in ancient times, public and private. The most surprising aspect is the high number of homes, luxurious or humble, that have preserved their bottles, glassware and ovens. Even more surprising the amount of furnishings that have remained intact, permitting us to see into the most personal aspects of the life of the inhabitants.

In the summer months the Pompeii Archaeological Superintendence organise evening tours of the ruins. Along the route the most evocative aspects of Pompeii by night are revealed, accompanied by Ennio Morricone’s musics. A multi-media presentation re-inacts the dramatic phases of the eruption.

The Forum was the active centre of the city: a large rectangular square (38x142 mt), it was paved with travertine and closed in on three sides by porticos. The Capitolium (a temple dedicated to Jupiter), the Temple of Apollo (built in the 3rd century BC) and the Basilica, the most important public building, seat of the courts of justice and centre of economic life, all give onto the square.

Nearby is the Forum Thermal baths, divided into sections for men and women, with shared  central heating. The Via Abbondanza (the road of Abundance) was the main artery of the city (the name is modern , as all Pompeiian names are) along which all sorts of businesses plied their trade: stores, inns, laundries, craftsmen. The Stabiane Baths, the oldest of Pompeii, is along this road. Not far is the famous brothel, a two-story building whose true purpose was revealed by the many erotic paintings and licentious graffiti decorating it.

Of all the houses, the House of the Faun is considered the most beautiful: for its architectural elegance and for the famous mosaics, like the one representing the battle of Alexander and Darius, a masterpiece now in the Archaeological Museum of Naples.

The house belonging to the merchant brothers Vettii is admired for the many splendid frescoes that adorn the walls. The Menandro house (that takes its name from a painting showing the Greek comedy playwright Menandro) is the source of a rich collection of exceptionally high quality silverware (now in the Archaeological Museum of Naples).

The Villa dei Misteri (of the Mysteries) is one of the most important buildings in Pompeii for its paintings. The most famous is the huge fresco that gave the Villa its name: 29 life-sized figures, painted with vivid colours on a red background, seem to depict some sort of Dionysian initiation ceremony or Orphic rite.


In the Theatre District  two theatres  have been recovered from the ashes: the Teatro Grande, where shows are organised in summer, and the little Odeion. Nearby is the lovely Temple of Isis. An epigraph demonstrates that the Amphitheatre is the oldest of the ones we know. Here gladiators wrestled with one another and with animals. Next to the amphitheatre is the Palestra Grande (Big Gymnasium), built under the reign of Augustus and used for gymnastic exercises. It is a large porticoed area with in its centre a  swimming pool with diving board. A sunset visit to the Via dei Sepolcri (the road of the Tombs) is particularly evocative, as the road passes by funeral monuments on its way to Herculaneum.

A tour of the Pompeii excavations takes at least one day.

One quick glance at the lay-out of the city and a fundamental fact immediately catches one's eye: Pompeii, unlike Herculaneum and ancient Naples, is not the fruit of an organic design of city planners. In the regular town design two atypical nuclei stand out: one, roughly quadrilateral, around the "civil forum" and the other around the tiny "triangular forum" next to the theatres district. To those nuclei is linked the rest of the city which by contrast looks "new": all this enclosed  within solid city walls.
This observation reveals the secret of the origins and development of Pompeii: its port on the mouth of the river Sarno is evidence of its Mediterranean vocation - from the earliest history - with respect to its vast hinterland which in time came to include Acerra, Nola, Nuceria, as the ancient historian Strabo attests.
On a bed of prehistoric lava, Pompeii is founded in the second half of the VIIth century B.C. with an organization effort that presupposes objectives of lookout and defence connected to the nature of the relations between the Greeks and the natives.
The natives, peaceful when first colonized, later matured notions of armed action when the Chalcidenses, who held defensive posts along the sea-coast, threatened to cut off for ever the peoples of Campania from access to the sea. Despite the documented existence of a Doric temple dating from the second half of the VIth century B.C. on the terrace of the triangular forum, and other indications that were held valid until only a few years ago, Pompeii was not a Greek city, even though it had been influenced by Greek culture ever since the most archaic epoch. In the light of the results obtained from the stratigraphic researches carried out in these last years, it appears that Pompeii, at the time of its foundation and its first development, was much more conditioned, politically, by the Etruscans than by the Greeks.
There is also evidence that it was connected to an "Etruscan territory" centred on Capua (Santa Maria Capua Vetere), which comprised large portions of inland Campania and, through the Sarno valley, the Sorrento peninsula. Disconcerting evidence of this has been found at Vico Equense.
Pompeii's commercial vocation upsets completely the former architectural and decorative order, transforms the habits of its inhabitants, generates self-made entrepreneurs and exploiters.
A "vertical section" of the city in the last decades of its life before the 79 A.D. eruption of Vesuvius, would offer a picture - in contrast with the calm of former times - of roads, inns, taverns bustling with people, brothels in full activity, stall keepers in the forum, the amphiteatre cram-full of people, slaves of an irrational passion for sport, always ready for a brawl, walls covered with election slogans in favour of this or that candidate, graffiti with names, quips, love messages everywhere.
House building in the meanwhile was capriciously spreading beyond the walls, it consolidated westwards in dismal phalansteries.  Painting lost its capacity of perspective. The former articulation which can be seen in the vast cycles of paintings of the "Villa of the Mysteries" (Villa dei Misteri), is often reduced to nothing but commonplace and poor quality decoration.
In the last few years every possible effort has been concentrated on restoration but excavations have also been going on the city walls, bringing to light the walls from "Porta di Sarno" to "Porta di Nola" and beyond towards "Porta Vesuvius".
Stratigraphic research work has also been given a substantial boost.
The four-storey building that incorporates the walls, north of "Porta Marina", has been excavated while the diggings at the "House of Julius Polybius" (Casa di Giulio Polibio) have brought to light new and sensational discoveries.
The zones that still have to be excavated in the north-eastern area may hold some more unexpected surprises in store but at this point we can say that the "picture" of life in Pompeii, thanks also to stratigraphic research, has already been quite clearly defined. 

The eruption

The eruption of the Vesuvius, which raged from the afternoon of August 24th through to the 26th, were recorded, albeit a few years later, by Gaius Plinius Secundus, who in 79 AD was seventeen years old and staying with his uncle, an admiral in the imperial fleet and a keen naturalist. He was persuaded to narrate the events by Tacitus in two letters when the latter was acquiring material for the second part of his "Historiae".
Those last days of August had been preceded by earth tremors, a common enough phenomenon in Campania that aroused no particular apprehension. But early in the afternoon of the 24th an enormous cloud in the shape of a pine tree appeared and it changed colour continuously.
The admiral was studying the cloud, not knowing its cause, when a call for help arrived from Rectina, the wife of Tascio, who lived at the foot of Vesuvius. She found herself hemmed in by the eruption, with only the sea offering a possible route to safety. The admiral ordered the entire fleet to put to sea, intending to take off as many as possible of the numerous inhabitants along that part of the coast. 
During the crossing the ships were covered in the ash pouring out of the volcano, which as they drew nearer the coast became hotter and denser, containing flaming pumicite and lapilli. The force of the eruption was such that the ships could not land and had to sail on the port of Stabiae, four miles to the south of Pompeii.
The admiral went ashore and had dinner as guest of Pomponiano, continuing to scrutinising the spectacle that, with nightfall, had become truly awesome.
There was no let up in the shower of ash, which built up in drifts in the central courtyard of the house, forcing the diners to leave the dining room before they were trapped inside. What is more, the tremors went on unabated, shaking the buildings to their foundations, and everybody chose to stay out in the open, covering their heads with cushions to protect themselves from the storm of scorching particles, rather than risk being buried under falling masonry.
At dawn on August 25th the light of the sun was unable to penetrate the thick veil of soot hanging over the never-ending eruption, while the condition of wind and sea continued to make escape impossible. The admiral was overcome by the choking ashes mixed with sulphurous exhalations and he died along with many other inhabitants of Pompeii. The contorted corpses of some of them have been restored to us in plaster casts, bringing home the excruciating suffering of a death by suffocation from fumes.
During the years the city passed into total oblivion, such that even its name was forgotten. Even in the first years of excavations, which began in 1748, no one was quite sure whether the site was Stabiae or Pompeii, until, as Winckelmann recorded, an inscription came to light which proclaimed unequivocally the name of the Pompeiian colony.
Since then more than two centuries have gone by, and millions of visitors have come to experience one of the most significant legacies of the ancient world, carrying away with them sensations and reflections which may indeed be of use in charting their future lives

The Visit

Porta Marina. The name is modern and indicates that the roads passing through this gate led down to the sea. The gate originally had two arches (one for pedestrian only) made into one barrel vault in opus cementitium (a compound of mortar and stones)


The Antiquarium is a museum which assembles the evidences of the life and the civilisation of Pompeii including the famous casts of the corpses of some inhabitants and animals died during the eruption. We can found other important founds to the Archaelogical National Museum in Naples.

The  Forum  centre of the city, a large rectangular square rich of columns and bases of innumerable statues

1 - The Basilica court site 
2 - Temple of Apollo
3 - Temple of Vespasian and Jupiter
4 - Macellum o covered market
5 - Forum Baths
6 - Temple of Fortuna Augusta.






Along the elegant Via di Mercurio we can found, with the other constructions, The House of the Big Fountain and The House of the Small Fountain, so called by a kind of fountain typically oriental, in fact they came from Egypt


House of the Faun 
is considerate the most beautiful example of a private house of the ancient world because its greatness, the elegance of its architecture  and the splendid mosaics. 



House of the Vettii  is, instead, the most famous, perhaps by the famous little statue of the god Priapo, it is the most admired; it was of two rich merchants and it is full of very well preserved paintings , statues, decorations and wonderful rooms.



There are many other beautiful houses  , and we can visit, moreover, in Pompei  many Shops, Bakeries and Artisan Laboratories, and the most famous is  the Fullery of Stephanus , that show us the evidence of a rich life that in a moment it is stopped as suspended in the time.


Other important constructions are: 
The Large Palestra 
The Amphitheatre,

the most ancient of the Roman world
The Little Theatre  
The Thermal Baths 



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Villa dei Misteri, Not far from the excavations we can visit Villa of the Mysteries, a large construction (55 rooms), famous because  its beautiful paintings inspired by the Dionysiac mysteries that had happened here.


1) Via dell' Abbondanza
2) Venus in the shell
3) House of Venus
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