Greece & Italy Day 10: I visited a brothel

I have a funny feeling this post is going to get read the most.

Today we visited Pompeii. I’m not sure anything I write can do it justice. The entire city has been preserved allowing us to see exactly how people lived when it was destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. While on the human level it was an absolute tragedy, from the archaeological perspective it’s a treasure trove of valuable information. At 165 acres it’s the largest archaeological site in the world and 1/3 of it isn’t even excavated yet. Interestingly there’s a new train of thought in archaeology – keep stuff buried until we come up with better ways to preserve them.

Yep, us at another theatre -- this time in Pompeii

View of Mt. Vesuvius from forum of Pompeii

Random side note from yesterday – when we were walking through one of the forums, our guide pointed out that the archaeologist who unearthed in essentially chose which century he wanted to reveal. There’s an earlier era underneath, but it’s less exciting in terms of structures and such. Interesting thought in terms of the layered history. End side note.

At Pompeii, the most exciting part for me was seeing the House of Menander and its neighboring houses. In preparation for this study tour, we read “Reading Romans in Pompeii: Paul’s Letter at Ground Level,” which takes a look at the inhabitants of these houses and imagines how they would have understood the book of Romans if they had been members of a house church. The book offers extremely fascinating insights into how the gospel upended the class system of the time and challenged the cultural norms. I highly recommend it. The author goes into detail about those houses, so it was fascinating to see with our own eyes what he had described.

Pompeii House -- there was an open roof above that central basin so it could collect rainwater

Pompeii Fast Food -- people didn't usually cook in their houses, but instead bought their meals from shops such as this

Plaster cast of Pompeii victim trying not to inhale toxic gases (how most of them died)

Then there was, yes, the visit to the brothel. Fascinating to see the beds which are made of stone (so they didn’t wear out) and which are so much smaller than ours today (since people were shorter back then). The paintings in the brothel are also extremely well-preserved – so well-preserved that I won’t post any pictures here. They are depictions of sexual positions, allowing visiting sailors who don’t speak the language to point to what they are interested in. I’m not sure red light districts have changed much in 2000 years (not that I’d know!).

Dean of divinity school caught leaving the Pompeii brothel

For lunch, pizza! Our guide took us to a pizza place where we were told we should order one per person – they weren’t big enough to share. Turned out each was the size of a standard medium pizza in the U.S., but we managed to down the entire things regardless. Heather and I had Quattro Formaggio (Four Cheese) – yum! (And memories of “Gusta Formaggio!” from my visit to Europe in college.)

Pizza in Naples!

After lunch, we headed to the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, which is one of the most incredible museums in the world. Seriously – lots of world-famous works of art, including a mosaic of Alexander from the ruins of Pompeii. The miniscule mosaic stones and intricate detail is absolutely incredible. There’s also an incredibly large statue called the Farnese Bull which was carved from a single block of marble. It had some restoration work done a long time ago and it is now hypothesized that the restoration work was done by Michelangelo. There’s a statue of Hercules, a statue of Agrippina (Herod’s mother), and numerous amazing mosaics, painted plaster sculptures, and other artifacts discovered in Pompeii.

Naples Museum

Mosaic (and shell) covered column from Pompeii

Alexander the Great Mosaic from Pompeii (NOT a painting -- crazy cool!)

Farnese Bull

This entire area had numerous small (inactive) volcanoes and according to our guide was referred to as the “land of Cyclops,” since the volcanoes are “one-eyed monsters.” Interesting to think about how legends are born.

After the museum, we drove through the neighboring town of Pozzuoli – the New Testament Puteoli: “From there we set sail and arrived at Rhegium. The next day the south wind came up, and on the following day we reached Puteoli. There we found some brothers and sisters who invited us to spend a week with them. And so we came to Rome.” (Acts 28:13-14) Not much to see to tie things to Paul, but there were beautiful views of the bay.

View from Pozzuoli

View from Pozzuoli and us

We headed back toward Rome, stopping en route for dinner. Although we were still pretty full from lunch, we had a pre-set menu of appetizers, bread, two types of pasta, an entrée and dessert. You pretty much had to roll us all to the bus by the time we were done.

I expected to sleep the remaining two hours to Rome, but instead I finished my From Garden to City reading! Well, sort of. I managed to polish off 2nd Chronicles (which was much more interesting than I realized – I much prefer reading a single kingdom’s history than bouncing back and forth between Israel and Judah like in 1st and 2nd Kings). I still need to go back and read the two books I skipped – Genesis and Luke, but I managed to wrap up the rest in time!

Tomorrow: The final day of our trip! We hit Vatican City, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Mamartine Prison, and I don’t know what else. And then Friday morning we head home! Kind of sad to be leaving, but also kind of feeling ready to be done. It’s been pretty exhausting and non-stop. But totally worth it!