You can’t be surprised unless you have expectations. In 1709 a man was digging a well in a small town just south of Naples expecting to find water. Instead, he found nudes. The nudes were lifelike statues in what had once been the Forum of a Greco-Roman city buried under the ashes of Vesuvius when it erupted in 79 AD. He had unexpectedly discovered the ruins of Herculaneum.
Unlike the 18th century well digger we expected to find the ruins of Heraculaneum, named after the Greek god Hercules, when we resisted the call of our hotel’s cliff top terrace with its seductive view and set off for the town of Ercolano. After a short walk to Sorrento’s train station we boarded the Circumvesuviana, a commuter train that circumnavigates Mount Vesuvius, shuttling back and forth to Naples. Sorrento being the end of the line, there were only a handful of passengers who boarded the train with us. An hour later, after passing the more well known and popular tourist attraction of Pompei, we arrived in Ercolano where the ruins of Heraculaneum were discovered.
Ercolano’s main street is unremarkably drab and our ten minute walk downhill from the station did nothing to heighten my expectations at to what lay at the bottom. When we reached the end of the street and passed through an arch I was surprised, not by the ruins, but by their abrupt appearance. The bland streetscape of Ercolano had been peeled back like a plain wrapper revealing the hidden city underneath: Not a ruined city but a sculpted one that was still being carved from the stone. It was as if the sculptor, perhaps Hercules, himself, had taken a break might return at any moment, giant chisel in hand, to find us mortals peeking under the sheet he’d draped over his incomplete work.
We followed our guide down the cobblestone lanes, popping inside homes, public baths, shops, temples, a sports complex and seeing some things that you won’t find in Pompei; wood beams, floors, balconies and shelves. There were frescos on the walls and mosaics on the floors but the statues that the well digger had been startled by were nowhere to be seen and not just because the forum is still buried but because they, as well as most of the other statues and works of art that were discovered, had long ago been removed to museums and private collections. One of the most recent discoveries is the House of the Papyri, a villa that housed an extensive library written on papyrus scrolls. The scrolls have been removed for study but researchers have yet to find a way to open them so that they can be read without destroying them in the process. Our guide told us that in order to excavate the House of the Papyri so that it can be excavated and open for view it will be necessary to purchase and remove the neighborhood of Ercolano that sits on top of the site. Much more of the town would have to be removed in order for the Forum and the rest of Herculaneum to be uncovered.
As we left the ruins we walked past the arched vaults that had been used to shelter boats when the sea had lapped against Heraculaneum before it was buried by the eruption of Vesuvius. The vaults became macabre display cases for the petrified bodies of men, women and children who had been trying to escape in the boats when the pyroclastic surge suddenly smothered them in gas and ash: What had once been flesh and blood had been transformed in an instance into screaming stone. How would the well digger have reacted if he had unexpectedly found himself in the midst of these contorted, terror-stricken, bodies instead of the shapely nudes in the Forum? I imagine he might have believed he’d discovered hell and gotten the heck out of there and Herculaneum would have remained sealed under 60 feet of rock and Ercolano would just be another stop on the Circumvesuviana.
I could see through its windows as it came to a stop in Ercolano that the train from Naples was packed. When the doors slid open a gang of teenage boys faced us, blocking the entrance. They all had the same haircuts; the sides of their heads shaved with a thick thatch of hair on top and wore tee shirts that showed off their adolescent muscles. For a moment I wasn’t sure they would let us in and I also wasn’t sure if we should enter if they did. I thought of the time in Prague years before when some young men blocked the door to the subway and then attempted to pick my pockets when I tried to push into the car. Suddenly the teenagers separated and we were able to board just before the doors closed. We quickly made our way down the aisle as the train began to move and luckily found some seats to squeeze into. The teenage boys continued to loiter around the doors and seemed to be leering at us passengers as if they had something in mind. One of the boys reached down to a black box that was hanging from his shoulder by a strap and punched something. I was surprised by an explosion of music; the teenage boys began to laugh and dance, a couple of them even swinging from the overhead grab bars by their arms and legs. Relaxing back into my seat I watched them perform as the car swayed gently back and forth on our way around Vesuvius to Sorrento.
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