Apartments in Florence, Perugia, Rome, Sorrento and Positano

About POMPEII

Pompeii offers the terrible and wonderful sight of life stopped in one moment, as if it could be taken up again at another moment, without the lifelessness that is the feature of archeological ruins. The oil presses almost in motion, the shops with their scorched bread, the pitchers full of grain, the triclinium prepared for supper. It remains an impressive sight. But this is to say nothing of the art treasures, from the frescoes to the bronzes, marble statues to decorations, mosaics to gold, and furniture to utensils: all make exhumed Pompeii an indispensible stopping place for the tourist in Italy. Its history is well known: the city was Oscan, then allied to Greece against the Etruscans. It was independent in 89 B.C. when Silla made it a Roman colony. But Pompeii had its own supremecy of elegance and refinement that conquered the Romans, and it was soon the seat of pleasure for the inhabitants of Urbe. They competed to build their sumptuous villas there and a fervour of amusenment and high social life characterised the city in the last years of its existence, neath the cool climate that extends from Vesuvius to the sea. But it was from Vesuvius that danger came: in a few hours the eruption had buried it in the sleep of centuries. In 1784 the exploration began by means of passageways, more for the sake of taking away statues and precious objects than for scientific interest. In 1860 methodical excavation began under Fiovelli. But it was under Amadeo Maiuri that Pompeii almost completely saw light once more, not only because of the fullness and caution of his research, but because of the loving care this archeological teacher took to decipher the pure and superb lines of the City and its sophisticated life.