Vesuvius In Action

I visited different important places of Campania/Italy with my relatives this week and wanted to dedicate some posts to these trips.

Today I show you some photos about the distructive nature of Vesuvius. If you remember, I wrote about volcanoes in the last period (Active Volcanos and Fuji And Vesuvio for example) and so with this and next posts we continue the talk about them.

I try to insert big photos in the html code, so -I hope- if you click on the photo you have to pass to the original big photo.

Well, here we are on the way to the 1000 m quote where it's possible to leave the car. From that place all visitors have to go about 4 km-s till the cratere.
Vesuvius has nothing special and is not more scary as any other mountain I've seen in my life if you see it from this place.

To turn you more close to the reality, the way is full of the modern sculptures (I'm sure I've not seen them when I was here about 10 years ago). This one specially produced great impression on me (after infinite quantity of hairpins that made me half alive half dead).

Here, on the right behind the light, you can see the level of the streets today and the wall of the volcanic ashes in the background on the left. This is the town of Herculaneum, one of the different Roman towns buried by the eruption of 79.

Here you can see it better, the wall of boiled (during eruption) ashes felt on the heads of the persons. By the way, the t° of it is 500-600°C, and human meat vaporizes by contact with it.

Finally this interesting photo. Modern life and antique town together. Only a little part of the Roman town is possible to see today, the excavations. The modern town grew on the same place where was situated forgotten Herculaneum. Nobody remembered it. There was only the story written by Plinius-jun. about a splendid port near Vesuvius that was lost under the lava during the eruption of Vesuvius. But nobody wanted beleave him. Everybody said, it was a fable...