Walk the wagon-rutted streets of Pompeii
The wagon-ruts along Via dell'Abbondanza are worn pale and smooth in the stone, two grooves you can lay your foot into after two thousand years of cart wheels. A guard by one of the shuttered houses mentions, almost apologetically, that they're opened only on rotation, a few rooms a week, to keep the frescoes from fading in the light. In August the dust smells hot, chalky, like a struck match gone out. Somewhere near the stepping-stones you remember AD79, the ash falling for two days straight, and later, past a bakery, the plaster cast of a dog still curled where it died, legs pulled in tight, waiting for something that never came.
Practical
- Cost
- ~$20 entrance fee
- Best time
- Spring or autumn, to avoid summer heat and crowds
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time it takes
- 3–5 hours to see the main sites
- What people get wrong
- People treat it as a quick photo stop and rush through in under an hour, missing the side streets and houses where most of the detail is; they also underestimate the heat and the uneven stone paving, and skip water and proper shoes.
- With
- A group