Pompeii

Resumo

"Pompeii" by Richard Engelmann is a travel and art-historical guidebook written in the early 20th century. It offers a clear, engaging tour of the buried Roman city, blending history, archaeology, and art to orient culturally inclined travelers to the ruins. The focus spans the city’s destruction and rediscovery, its streets and forums, temples and theatres, baths and houses, and the paintings, mosaics, and objects that illuminate daily life. The opening of this guide sets the scene with Naples and Vesuvius, recounts the A.D. 79 catastrophe via Pliny the Younger, and explains how plaster casts captured victims’ final forms. It then traces the site’s post-eruption fate and rediscovery, the evolution from treasure-hunting digs to Fiorelli’s scientific methods and in-situ preservation, and the complementary role of the Naples museum. Next comes a brisk portrait of the city’s growth and plan—Oscan and Samnite origins, walls and gates, narrow paved streets with stepping-stones and drains, public fountains, shops, painted notices, and graffiti. The narrative surveys key public spaces and buildings (Triangular Forum, Forum with the temples of Jupiter and Vespasian, Macellum, Eumachia’s hall, Basilica, Apollo, Isis, Fortune), entertainment venues (theatres, amphitheatre, gladiators’ barracks), and the Forum and Stabian baths with their rooms and heating. It introduces the Roman house (atrium, tablinum, peristyle, lararia), wall-painting styles and mosaics (notably the Alexander mosaic), notable artworks and portraits, garden fountains and bronzes, household furniture, and lighting—closing this beginning with a glimpse of luxury silver and bronzes from nearby Bosco Reale that enrich the picture of Pompeian life. (This is an automatically generated summary.)