Pompeii - The city frozen in time

 Versión en Español

Pompeii
The city frozen in time

Pompeii, 24 August 79 A.D.

"The city has only just waking up in the streets begins the bustle of carts and mules. The cries of street vendors mingle with the sounds of street vendors. By midmorning a roar rends the air terrifying: the lava plug that blocked the chimney of Mount Vesuvius just jump out of the gas pressure, releasing a cloud so thick lapilli that obscure the sun before returning to fall as rain on housing. At night, Pompeii is buried under several meters of lapilli and ash. In vain have tried to flee their inhabitants suffocated by the gases, crushed beneath the buildings, have been falling one after another in houses and streets. Before he died, someone has the courage to escrbir on a wall: "Sodom and Gomorrah!".

The Bay of Naples in 79 A.D

Disaster reporter

  The end of Pompeii had an illustrious witness. The letters sent Pliny the Younger, Tacitus to describe the eruption of Vesuvius and its consequences are a force, humanity and stunning realism:

"Had already begun to fall ash, but still was not very dense. I turned: a thick fog like a raging torrent towards us. Suddenly fell the night, black as ink, like the inside of a tomb. You could hear the wailing of women, children crying, the clamor of men. Some called their relatives, others to their children or spouses, while trying to recognize their voices. Some wept over his fate, others by their relatives . There were even those who invoked the death, so great was his fear of dying. There were many who implored the gods, but some said that there were no gods and that night was the last of the world. "

 From the beginning the beginning of the eruption, the celebrated naturalist Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger's uncle, who commanded the fleet Miseno, had gone to Stabiae to observe more closely the phenomenon:

"He ran down the beach to see if we could return to sea, but the sea was very rough. Then he lay on a blanket to take a short break and asked several times water, bebiío eagerly. But the flames and fumes sulfur, drove the inhabitants and woke him. He stood up and supported by two slaves, but fell back when, because the ash thickened the air you breathe and prevent him from obstructing the trachea. When the light came back (to three days), both the leather and wearing clothes were found intact. It had said that he slept, but he was dead. "

 If this testimony, the only one we have, is really exceptional, the fact remainsthat under the deadly ash layer could be perfectly preserved city. The day he was discovered and this layer was removed, appeared miraculously intact, costreets, which still had traces of the passage of wagons, their homes andpublic buildings. To this must be added the bodies of men and animals thatwere caught in the terrible trap. An ingenious system invented by thearchaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli, consisting of pouring plaster into the cavitiesleft by the bodies, has allowed them to return as they were at the time of his death. They have also resurfaced, walls, popular designs, refined paintings, imprecations and obscene comments, along with inscriptions on the marble.