Southern Italy Study Tour: Ercolano

On our last day in Southern Italy, we had the option of either touring the local area of Castellamare di Stabia or visiting the ruins at Ercolano. Having explored much of the main part of Castellamare di Stabia in our free time the first day there, I decided to venture out to Ercolano.

Ercolano

Ercolano (Herculaneum) was another city like Pompei that was destroyed by Vesuvius's eruption in 76 A.D. However, Ercolano was much smaller than Pompei and much better preserved, due partly to differences in how the eruption effected the cities. Because of this, Ercolano was much more interesting to explore than Pompei: you could see more of the city's ruins because of its small size, the ruins were much less ruined (some houses still had parts of their original second stories and roofs still intact), and (except for the large groups of elementary school students) there were a lot less tourists to dodge.

Taberna (ancient hot food bar)

However, the most wonderful thing about Ercolano was the freedom to explore just about everywhere. In Pompei, there are wooden gates blocking almost every entrance to the buildings except for those that are the most well-preserved and best maintained. Therefore, in Pompei, you spend most of your time just strolling the streets and occasionally catching a glimpse of an interior space through a blocked off doorway or ruined gash in a wall. However, in Ercolano, because the entire city is so well-preserved and maintained, almost every building and every room inside is accessible to visitors, allowing you to get a really good idea of the scale and feeling of the ancient houses, public buildings, and overall urban planning. For the first time ever, I felt like I had a really good sense of the size of the different rooms of typical Roman housing.

Corinthian Atrium

The freedom to explore also allowed visitors to view frescoes, statues, and preserved architectural details in their original place. This was particularly interesting because you could see all of the different layers of the frescoes preserved on the walls. I never realized before just how colorful the ancients liked their houses. One can find colorful renderings of Roman temples in so many books, but it is always hard to believe that the white ruins we see today were once so vibrant. However, Ercolano is not a city of whitewashed ruins but full of color.

Fresco with original linework exposed

My favorite building in Ercolano was the so-called "House of the Black Salon." Nestled amidst a blacksmith's shop and various other stores and tabernae, This house was very well-planned, with careful attention to details that still read today, even in its ruined state. For example, the main sitting room for guests was located between and directly on axis with the main entry/atrium and the garden. By positioning this room adjacent to the two spaces exposed to direct natural lighting (the garden and the atrium), it is naturally well lit and inviting. Also, the columns that would have supported the overhanging roof in the garden line up precisely with the walls of the space, such that all of the openings off the garden are unblocked, maximizing their views and the amount of daylight they would receive.

House of the Black Salon, standing in the atrium and looking
through the double-height sitting room towards the garden