…are quite literally on our doorstep. The main entrance to the ruins is a mere 200m away from where we’re parked in this otherwise not-so-wonderful campsite.
We’d already bought tickets yesterday for both Herculaneum & Pompei. This was fortunate, as – by the time we got to the entrance, several coaches of assorted Americans, Japanese, et al and a train load of other visitors all arrived at once, eager to join the queue at the ticket counter. We breezed through & bought our audio-guides in double-quick time.
The ruins of Pompei are vastly more extensive than what has been excavated at Herculaneum. The first excavations of Pompei were started in the 1750s, although the lack of knowledge of preservation methods resulted in many artefacts being irretrievably lost. Only a small portion of Herculaneum has been excavated due to it having been built over, and the slight inconvenience of people living in the buildings over the site, so it’s not really well understood how big Herculaneum was.
On the other hand, it’s known that about 70% (IIRC) of Pompei has now been excavated. Nothing else was ever built over the site, so access is easier.
Pompei is still being excavated, explored (slowly) and renovated even today. Unfortunately, this has resulted in many of the buildings being “out-of-bounds” to the visitor. However, the sheer scale of the place still gives plenty of opportunity to see how it was governed and administered; how the wealthy & the less wealthy lived; the houses that doubled as shops; the villas and so on.
We managed to spend 5 hours there, and were getting pretty hot & footsore after that time, although we probably only saw about 50% of the ruins. If you ever get the opportunity to visit; do it.
We needed to get the van out of the campsite before 4pm to avoid another day’s charge. We managed just in time, and then started the long drive North, heading up towards Rome before finding our overnight stop – once again in San Giovanni Incarico, having been unable to locate the preferred Sosta that was allegedly at Cassino.
Again, poor internet bandwidth prevents me from uploading photos, right now, but I’ll do this later when I get chance.