the ancient scroll was found to contain a previously unknown narrative detailing how the Greek philosopher spent his last evening, describing how he listened to music played on a flute by a Thracian slave girl. Despite battling a fever and being on the brink of death, Plato...retained enough lucidity to critique the musician for her lack of rhythm
Quick aside, anyone interested in going to Pompeii should 100% go to Herculaneum instead.
There is way more preserved architecture there and it's much more ordered and beautiful and easy to walk around. And there are almost no tourists because Pompeii is so popular.
And there's dozens of skeletons. It's one of my most vivid memories from Italy.
I'm not sure I'd agree; I have been to both. I personally find them both very interesting, but for different reasons. I'd probably argue that Pompeii was better, just because there's more to see and more variety.
If a person could only pick one, they would have to decide whether they wanted to see how the wealthy lived (Herculano) or how regular folks lived (Pompeii). Additionally, Pompeii is a MUCH larger site, so if you're pressed for time or have mobility difficulties, that could help make the decision. Also, Herculano is a bit cooler (temperature-wise), so if it's hot out, maybe that's a deciding factor
I went everywhere in Pompeii, and was blown away by the dearth of actual artifacts and the very few remains considering how large and famous Pompeii is.
Herculaneum still has intact tiled mosaics and decorative tiled flooring, kitchens, entire houses, fossilized wood mantles in place above the door.
The rare dusty, largely intact table in Pompeii did not hold a candle to what is mostly an intact town with infrastructure like drainage, architectural features, hundreds of artifacts, the wildly vivid mosaics and tiling everywhere.
Pompeii is larger but it has so few actual artifacts and so few human remains compared to ercolano, in far worse states of preservation.
I'm surprised you think there's more there. I spend hours walking to every corner and was shocked at how little pompei had considering how popular it was.
It was only later that I found out pompeii was popular because it was found 7 years before ercolano or whatever.
I visited every single marked spot they provided. It was a plod.
The majority of the pompeii buildings are entirely or mostly missing or broken down, and you just have little placards that tell you what maybe used to be there.
In ercolano you actually have the buildings, the sewers, the kitchens, the pots they cooked in, the tiling, and the bones right there in front of you, all across town
You can touch the same ercolano walls, the wooden mantle that they entered their house under.
And also yeah pompeii was hot and dusty and barren and that sucked and Ercolano was extremely comfortable, had the intact artifacts, was structurally intact, had human remains, and was easier to walk.
Pompeii barely made an impression on me, but I have many transformative memories of ercolano.
