Pompeii by Kayley Rolph

         Last week, my family and I walked around the ancient abandoned town of  Pompeii. I thought that Pompeii was amazingly well presuved in volcanic ash.  Pompey was buried in ash because Mt. Vesuvious erupted in 79 Ad adn covered the city in ash and lava.



That´s Sarah and I by some mosaices and frescos.

          The buildings in Pompeii were very well presuved considering their age. Most of the building´s roofs caved in under the wieght of the volcanic ash. But, thankfuly, many things inside the buildings survived. It was a bit of a surprise for me that the frescos on the walls of the big houses are still there. The frescos on the walls looked easy to paint because the patternes were simple.  

The mosaics on the floor were also simple patterns.surprisingly,the fountains in the courtyards are still in good condition.

The remaining of the people that were in the Pompeii when the volcano erupted were covered in ash and probably died. The ash fell before the volcano erupted so all of the bodies were holding their mouths and noses to try not to breath in the ash. But the bodies were covered in ash any way. The bodies became like statues, volcanic ash statues that are shaped like people wearing togas laying on the ground or hugging their knees. The real bodies in side the statues are probably disintegrated through time. But the shell still stands. The thing that I found very weird about the statues is that none of the statues have hair. Maybe the hair burned but then the clothes would have burned too. Anyway I thought that the bodies or statues or what ever you call it are quite interesting.

Pompeii has three amphitheaters. One of the amphitheaters is called the Amphitheater and is the biggest of the three. The amphitheater is missing about 3/4ths of the of the marble seats that make up the huge arena. On The other two theaters there are only 2/3rd of of a circle of stone seats. The marble seats are wrapped around a circular stone stage. One of the two theaters is bigger than the other this one is called the great theater . The great theater can fit 5,000 spectators the round stands. The other theater is called the is called the small theater. The small theater was probably used for musical performances and poetry readings. All of the theaters were in very good condition.

There were many narrow street in Pompeii the big ones were made out of a very dark grey colored stone. The stone was worn smooth from all the thousands of feet walking on the streets for century's. Also there were cart wheel ruts or tracks in the stone that were quite deep and the side walks were nice and wide. Branching of the main road were small alley ways were surprisingly not dusty, but made out of dirt. The dirt sloped in to the middle of the alley like a ravine. But surprisingly the alleys didn't look all eroded and hade rivers flowing through the middle.

Pompeii was a really nice but ancient town to walk around in. It's nice because it's easy to imagine how it looked and felt before the volcano erupted. Also the roads are nice.

By Kayley S. Rolph