PRIVATE TOUR POMPEII HERCULANEUM VESUVIUS

Pompeii and Herculaneum are both listed in the UNESCO world heritage sites.

Until August 24 of 79AD the two cities were the most important on the bay of Naples.

Pompeii was a trading city about 20000 inhabitants, Herculaneum, less then 5000 inhabitants was a resort city where the ancient Romans used to go for vacation. The morning hours of August 24 year 79AD Mount Vesuvius started to erupt, until this day the local people didn't know that the mountain was a volcano because it didn't look like a volcano and also they had no records of any activity in the past history. People were surprised, at beginning they didn't know what to do, for sure they were people who scared and left but many other like slaves didn't move because they didn't know where to go. This was the situation during morning hours, only small explosions and lava that descended along the slops, in late afternoon the eruption increased its power until late evening when the top of the mountain blew up. The city of Herculaneum located down below the feet of the mountain was totally buried under 20 meters (60Ft) of volcanic mud and lava.

Pompeii, located a few Km south west of the mountain was reached by an avalanche of hot ash and poisonous gases (the pyroclastic flow) that instantly killed the people still in the city. This disaster remained in people's mind for many years but little by little the names and location of these cities were totally forgotten. The city of Pompeii was discovered the end of the 16th century but the first excavations were made only in 1753 under the king Charles III of Bourbon. Herculaneum was discovered the beginning of the 18th Century.

Between 1920 and 1960 same very intensive excavations were provided and we can say that today the two-thirds of Pompeii and one-third of Herculaneum have been brought to light.

Mount Vesuvius is considered one of the world's most dangerous volcanos and it is the only active on the mainland of Europe.

Last eruption was in march 1944 and is now a sleeping volcano. The Vesuvius observatory monitors the volcano 24 hrs a day in order to alert the resident people days before. The area around the mountain is known as the "red zone", we are talking of 700.000 people that leaves in 18 different towns located in this area. Each one of these town has an evacuation plan studied by the department of Italy Civil Protection.

We drive up to 1000 meters ASL , from this point there is a path to walk up to the crater in about 30 minutes.