This tour includes an English-speaking guide for 2 hours.
ENTRANCE FEES ARE NOT INCLUDED
This is a typical private guided tour of Pompeii (two hours) where your guide will show you an example of a Roman house, streets, shops and so on, but at the same time he will provide also specific pieces of information about the water system in Pompeii (Castellum Aquae, water towers, water pipes, fountains, ecc.).
Enjoy your visit!
Pompeii, located at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, is a precious evidence that comes to us from the past. The studies carried out by researchers in this area have proved the existence of a residential centre founded by Oschi as early as the VI century BC. This first nucleus of what will become the town of Pompeii, developed rapidly both from the economic and urban standpoints mainly due to its position that allowed Pompeii to communicate easily with the inland cities and also, by sea, with the more distant cities. The subsequent development of the city was also very encouraged by the contacts with the Etruscan and Greek colonies, especially Cuma, which at that time, had a role of unchallenged supremacy over the Gulf of Naples. The influence of these two civilizations on Pompeii is evident in the architecture of some structures (for example, the Doric temple of the Triangular Forum is of Greek origin) and in the urban structure of the city. Later, under the rule of Rome, Pompeii had a great period of serenity. But this serenity abruptly interrupted by the violent earthquake of 62 AD. Actually, the city suffered major damage but was able to react vigorously finding again its prosperity.
But less than 20 years later, again the misfortune hit the city. The tragic morning of August 24, 79 AD, the inhabitants of Pompeii awoke to find that the fertile mountains at the foot of which the city was founded was nothing more than a volcano remained inactive until that day. Differently from Herculaneum and other towns in the area which were swept away by a river of mud, Pompeii was buried under a huge toxic cloud of ash, lapilli and stones that were deposited on the city, forming a layer of about 7 meters high. A part of the inhabitants, predicting the magnitude of the catastrophe, took refuge towards the sea, while there were numerous victims among the residents who remained in the city.
Ash and lapilli struck the city of Pompeii so hard that from that day it was virtually abandoned. Only a few of the survivors returned a little later in the hope to find some of their goods still intact, but these searches in the majority of cases were in vain as the houses were almost all destroyed or submerged from 6 or 7 meters of volcanic materials. One of the most descriptive accounts of that eruption of Mt Vesuvius was by Pliny the Younger, in the form of two letters to the historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus, written in 100 AD. For this reason and because of its level of preservation, Pompeii has been the matter of books, scholarly and frivolous and a perfect subject for the big screen.
Then Pompeii disappeared from history to come back only much later. Between the end of the XVI century and the beginning of the XVII century when, due to the excavations for the construction of a channel, traces of some ancient buildings were discovered. But it was only in 1748, during the reign of Charles of Bourbon, that systematic excavations were undertaken to unearth this ancient city (whose ruins cover today more than sixty acres and are surrounded by walls more than three kilometres long) and its priceless treasures.
