Brunelleschi's Dome

In the year 1296, the foundation stone for a new cathedral was laid in the heart of the city of Florence, Italy. The cathedral, which would be named Santa Maria del Fiore, was supposed to provide material evidence of the prosperity and success of the city of Florence, a wealth mostly accumulated from the sale of the finest cloth in all of Europe. It shows in the final product today, an impressively sized Florentine Gothic building clad in multicolored marble right in the center of the city.

The original architect of the cathedral was a master mason named Arnolfo di Cambio. Di Cambio presided over the laying of the cornerstone in 1296 and in the subsequent decades, the construction of the cathedral proceeded according to his design. Back in the late 13th century, the guidance used to construct a cathedral was not on a roll of drawings and a book of specifications like we use to build buildings today but instead a scale model of the final product to guide the craftsmen. And by scale model, I mean one 60 feet long or more, not something that can fit on the top of a dining table.

About 14 years after the laying of the cornerstone, di Cambio died. Sometime after that during the 1300s, his model collapsed and in doing so, the vision of his original design was lost. Construction proceeded for a while anyway until 1366 when the folks in charge of executing the construction of the cathedral (the wool merchants' guild) decided they ought to make sure they had a better idea of how to get to the finish line than just keeping the workers laying stone after stone with no sort of idea of what the finished product would look like.

So they ordered a new model (two models actually) so they would have some idea of how to finish the building. The preferred model was built by another master mason named Neri di Fioravante. It was about 30 feet in length and not surprisingly, it revised the design for the cathedral just a bit, although exactly how much the design changed we are not sure since the original model doesn't exist. The most striking aspect of the preferred model of the cathedral was its massive dome, which was to span over the entire crossing of the church without flying buttresses and could be built without any sort of wooden support. When it was completed, it would be the largest dome in the world.

Neri di Fioravante's model survived the construction process and became the blueprint for completing the cathedral. Unfortunately, the mason himself did not survive for long after he created his model, dying in 1374. The model left behind was used to guide the work on the unfinished cathedral for the next fifty years. Then something else happened; in 1418, the wool merchants' guild called for entries in a competition to advise them how the dome in di Fioravante's could possibly be built. For all the success and progress made on the building in the prior 122 years, it appeared that nobody knew how to build the dome. And that would be a problem. A big problem.

The interior of the dome of Santa Maria della Fiore as seen from the cathedral's floor.

The winner of the 1418 tell-us-how-to-build-our-dome contest was a 41 year old goldsmith and clockmaker named Filippo Brunelleschi. For the next 28 years, he would supervise, either in whole or in part, the erection of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore. He lived long enough to witness the consecration of the first stone of the dome's lantern but only just; about a month later he was gone. The dome of Santa Maria del Fiore would end up being Brunelleschi's final and most important work. He not only figured out how to erect the dome without the use of centering or other formwork, he also oversaw the construction daily and invented most, if not all, of the machines used to hoist the stones in place high above the streets of Florence.

Brunelleschi's commission in 1418 was not without challenges. Between the time the results of the competition were announced and the time the dome was completed, he would have to prove and re-prove his ideas about how the dome could be erected, facing challenges from within the wool merchants' guild and from exterior rivals, notably Lorenzo Ghiberti, a Florentine goldsmith who also fancied himself an architect. Brunelleschi prevailed in every challenge and has been revered in Florence ever since his life's work was completed.

Brunelleschi's life would ultimately prove supremely influential. He produced three of the most important works of Italian Renaissance architecture in the duomo (which means cathedral in Italian), the Hospital of the Innocents and the Pazzi Chapel, which is located within the Basilica of Santa Croce; all three are in Florence. He would also discover or re-discover the principles of linear perspective, which allowed realistic pictures in three dimensions to be created on a two dimensional canvas or plane. But perhaps most importantly to me as a practicing architect, he managed to elevate the practice of architecture in the public's mind from a construction trade to an art, allowing it almost instantly to achieve the same footing as painting, sculpture or the other arts. He was really the world's first professional architect.

At its completion, the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore took the place of the Pantheon as the world's largest dome, knocking the Roman temple out of the top spot in that category for the first time in more than 14 centuries. Brunelleschi's dome would hold the same title for the next 445 years. That's pretty impressive. Its design and construction principles would also inspire the two other great domes of the Renaissance: Michelangelo's St. Peter's Basilica in Rome designed in 1547 and completed in 1590 after his death and Sir Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral designed following the Great Fire of London in 1666 and completed in 1697. Last year, I had the opportunity to climb to the top of St. Paul's dome; this year, I climbed to the top of Florence's duomo.

Climbing to the top of St. Paul's Cathedral last September involved walking up 528 steps. Ascending Santa Maria del Fiore would be easier on paper: just 463 steps. But climbing between the streets of London and Florence and the tops of their respective cathedrals is different despite the fact that one is based almost entirely on the construction of the earlier of the two. I didn't really understand that until I finished climbing.

We chose to climb the duomo first thing in the morning on our last day in Florence, a stay that was probably all too short at just two and a half days with one day out of town. We chose to do it early for two reasons. First, we figured climbing to the top of the cathedral would be popular (it was) and getting their early would mean fewer people to contend with, especially at the top. Second, we had a train to catch to Venice at about noon and figured the sooner we were up, the sooner we could get down. Getting there early proved to be a good decision.

Unlike St. Paul's, which you enter and then make your way to the steps to start your climb to the top, Santa Maria del Fiore offers two entrances to the visitor: one to get into the cathedral and one to get to the dome. The entrance to the dome is at the northwest side of the drum on which the dome sits and the doors open at 8:30 a.m. We were in line at about 8:10 or so, which put us about 30-40 people deep waiting for the doors to open. This seemed to me to be a good spot to be in. It was.

When they finally let you in the door, the start of the climb is probably about 20 feet away, through a small opening in the cathedral wall where you can see the beginning of the spiral staircase beyond. This stair is one of four at each of the "corners" of the dome (the dome is octagonal, not circular); these stairs are the same stairs that the masons used to get to work each morning to lay the bricks and stone in place high above the streets of Florence. The masons would be carrying all their tools as well as lunch and water or wine. We carried nothing but what we wore and our phones and iPods. I'm sure their climb was more difficult and they probably didn't view it as fun.

The first stair, which is spiral but rectilinear, is somewhat tight. I guess two people could pass by each other barely, which I suppose is why the masons back in the 1400s had two stairs for going up and two for coming down. Just like the more encumbered masons, we would also only use this first stair for ascending and end up coming down on the south side of the building. At the top of this stair, you emerge into one of the four half dome structures which sit at the corners of the dome's drum. You can see two of these structures in the photograph at the top of this post. This allows you some time to breathe in a less confined space, in addition to catching your breath if you need it, before starting up the next stair.

The next stair (shown above) is tighter and is a true spiral. There's no way two people could pass on this thing and climbing it is more difficult than the first stair. It's steeper and there are no handrails on either side so "hanging on" just involves touching the outside or inside of the stair walls. This stair takes you from the half dome shaped structures at the corners of the dome to the gallery at the base of the dome, which is located above the windows situated all around the drum of the dome. It's a shorter climb than the first which is good. While the first stair also had no handrails, at least it was a little bigger. For the record, St. Paul's has handrails. Just saying…

I have no idea what possesses people to do stuff like this, but on the walls of the two stairs are innumerable writings by people bound and determined to make their mark in Sharpie or whatever else they brought to write with on what is Florence's most prized monument. There are plenty of signs on the way up and down asking people not to do this but I suppose most of this is premeditated rather than an on-the-spot idea. We even found some at the top of the dome which were really recent, including some made by some Americans. While I seem by and large to have selected pictures without graffiti for this post, trust me it's there. I was disgusted with the whole thing. Just a rant, I know.

The next step on your journey to the top involves making your way around a very tight cantilevered balcony just at the interior base of the dome. From here you can get an up close and personal look at the frescoes on the interior of the dome, including the huge number of demonic figures that seem to be assaulting the human figures towards the top of the dome. The humans appear to be winning.

Walking around the balcony is a little freaky. You are far above the cathedral floor and it's obvious. There's really no danger of falling off or dropping anything because of the six foot or so high plexiglass barrier on your right but it's a little unnerving just the same. I really felt like I was on a walkway just tacked onto the interior of the cathedral wall and it sort of felt a little flimsy. And you can't move with any urgency unless you are the first in line or the people ahead of you are motivated to move fast. The folks in front of us were not, despite the signs on the barrier in six languages telling us to "keep going, please." There's only so much I can stare up at a painting of humans and demons fighting, especially when I feel like I'm standing on a walkway about to drop a hundred feet or more to the cathedral floor below. Keep going, PLEASE!!!

Once you finally get off the somewhat scary catwalk, then you start climbing up through the dome itself. The dome of Santa Maria del Fiore is actually two domes, one inside the other. One dome projects the correct height from the exterior of the building; the other maintains a pleasing proportion when viewed from the interior of the cathedral. It's exactly the same philosophy as at St. Paul's in London essentially because Wren stole the idea from Brunelleschi.

The climbing experience between the two cathedrals is completely different. The double domes at St. Paul's have a ton of space between them. Enough even to place a series of metal spiral stairs between the two to get access to the top. Santa Maria del Fiore has no such space. In fact the place is downright tight. The stair which wraps around the form of the interior dome is no wider than the first stair you climb up from the floor of the church. If I wanted to, I could have spread my arms and touched both the exterior of the inner dome and the interior of the outer dome at the same time.

The mood and lighting of the two climbs is also way different. St. Paul's is well lit and the interior surfaces are painted white, which allows for good visibility. Not so at Santa Maria del Fiore. Here the brick and stone are left their natural color and the light in the stairs is provided by some spotty, really old looking lighting fixtures and small portholes in the dome itself, allowing a little (and I do mean little) natural light to enter the space. 

The object of the two climbs is the same, however. Get up the stairs and whatever else there is to climb, fit through the openings no matter how tight and get to the top and see the view. The narrow stair after the interior balcony takes you around the dome until you get to a spot where you reach the end of that stair and see before you another hewn into the outside of the interior dome itself going almost straight up. This is pretty much the final climb.

Stay between the handrails, hold on, watch your back and the almost vertical stair will get you to a spot with a steep ladder leading to a hatch. The final last few steps before you get to the top and some real views and fresh air. I'd heard and read the climb to the top of the duomo was claustrophobic and if you had any sort of nervousness about tight spaces then you should probably stay on the ground. I didn't get any of this on the climb up. Sure the stairs were tight but it wasn't as small as I'd led myself to believe and I wouldn't have missed this trip for anything.

There are two other things to note about climbing and descending the dome. First, on the way up and down, you pass a series of windows in almost every stair, small openings that give you cool glimpses of the city of Florence. It's almost impossible for a first time visitor to understand where you are facing at any given time but every so often you'll spot something you recognize. These windows are completely open with a wire mesh screen over them so they also let in some welcome fresh air.

Secondly, the climb from the base of the dome to the top and back down again will be more crowded depending on the time of day you choose to visit. That's because the way up from the base of the dome is also the way down, meaning that tight stair that you thought wasn't so claustrophobic now needs to accommodate two people passing each other. We didn't notice this on our way up because there was nobody coming down first thing in the morning; we noticed on the way down. 

So you have climbed the rectilinear spiral stair, the circular spiral stair, the stair that wraps the dome, the stair which goes straight up the dome and the last ladder to the hatch at the top. Finally, you are standing on top of Brunelleschi's dome.

On a clear day (and the day we were there was relatively clear), you can see a pretty good distance all the way to the Tuscan hill towns that surround the city. You can take in the Campanile at the front of the Cathedral, the Palazzo Vecchio to the south, the Arno River and the church of San Miniato al Monte across the river to the southwest. Just like St. Paul's, it's the perfect spot to take in the city since the cathedral is right in the middle of everything. The only thing you can't see well from up there is the duomo itself.

The space at the top of the dome is remarkably large which I didn't expect. It can fit way more people up there than the top of St. Paul's, which is essentially a walkway which can accommodate two or maybe three people deep. There are even benches to sit on and you can actually get six feet or maybe more away from the exterior rail to snap some amazing pictures of your favorite people standing in front of the city of Florence. It's worth the climb, just like it was in England last September.

Looking east from the top of Santa Maria del Fiore.

Checking out the tiles and one rib, looking down towards the Hotel Duomo.

For some reason I can't explain, I have this compunction to climb as high as possible in every building I visit. For most cathedrals, standing right on top of the dome would satisfy this yen. But at the top of Santa Maria del Fiore there's an extra tease.

You see, the floor that you are standing on when you first climb out of the floor hatch is not the topmost point of the building. That point is maybe another 30 feet up and is accessed by a ladder behind a locked gate right near the point where you come out of the building to get as high as I got this past April. If only I had that key… 

The gate to the ladder to the very top.

Go Climb A Volcano

If you were to make a list of the top ten most famous volcanic eruptions in history, it is likely that most folks would put the 79 A.D. eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy at number one. Seriously. Could you even name ten? I'm not sure I could. What else are you going to put in the top spot? Washington state's Mount St. Helen's in 1980? Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull in 2010? Could you have even have come up with those two quickly if I hadn't written them down for you? I didn't think so. What else you got? I'm thinking nothing. Vesuvius is it. Number one!

On the morning of August 24, 79 something likely started to happen deep within Vesuvius which would result in a catastrophic eruption over the next two days or so. According to the only eyewitness who left any written document, Pliny the Younger, who was about 30 kilometers from the mountain in the town of Misenium, the real fireworks started at around 1 p.m. that afternoon. The initial eruption kicked up a massive amount of molten rock, stones and ash. By the time the eruption had ended, the energy released by Mount Vesuvius is estimated to be 100,000 times the energy of the atom bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in August of 1945. For a population living at that time, it must have seemed like the world was ending.

Apparently, the wind that day was blowing to the south and east pretty fiercely so the ash cloud that was released when the volcano initially exploded did not fall back to Earth right where it exited the cone but was instead carried some distance away from its point of origin. One of the places the ash landed and immediately destroyed was Pompeii, a Roman town probably founded between the 8th and 6th centuries B.C. This was no dusting of ash; there were meters of this stuff falling all at once, collapsing buildings and burying people in the town instantly.

The next day, August 25, saw the second phase of destruction caused by Vesuvius as the mountain released a series of pyroclastic flows, which is essentially fast moving molten rock and gas. Think about how hot rock has to get to be molten then imagine it moving at potentially more than 400 miles per hour and you get the picture. Anyone and anything in its way that is combustable or made of flesh is done for. The eruption those two days was so severe that pyroclastic flows reached as far away as Pompeii (about 15 kilometers or 9.3 miles from the top of the mountain)  which preserved everything pretty much perfectly that hadn't been destroyed by the ash the previous day. This same molten rock reached other towns at the base of the volcano, most notably Herculaneum to the west.

Ultimately what makes Vesuvius' eruption so famous is not necessarily how powerful it was but how it was recorded and what it left behind. I mean if nobody saw it and nobody was killed by it, we likely never would have understood how deadly it was and it wouldn't make anyone's top ten list. But we have Pliny the Younger's account of the event and five towns have been partially excavated that were both destroyed and preserved in the eruption, including Stabiae, Oplontis, Boscoreale and most famously, Pompeii and Herculaneum. Today all five sites, but especially the last two, are both significant active archeological sites and major tourist attractions that provide unique views of Roman life almost two millennia ago.

The Bay of Naples on a foggy day from near the top of Mount Vesuvius.

When I first told people I know that I had booked a trip to Italy, I got a ton of advice (either solicited or unsolicited) about what to see. Apparently just about everyone I know or talked to had been there and they all had their own list of must sees and hidden gems. Of all the people I talked with, very few told me to go to either Pompeii or Herculaneum and nobody told me to go to Mount Vesuvius. One guy I worked with actually told me NOT to go to Pompeii and told me it was a complete waste of time.

I like to think that I consider the advice of others sometimes but I have to tell you, there was no way I was setting foot in Rome without taking a couple of hours train ride south to Naples and from there visiting both the volcano and at least one of the most famous towns it destroyed. No way, no how! So on Easter Monday (our first full day in country), we got up early and headed down to Roma Termini station and boarded a train for Napoli.

In making a decision as to whether to visit Pompeii or Herculaneum, we considered a number of factors and read a ton of guidebooks. Ultimately, we decided to visit Herculaneum and not Pompeii for a few reasons. First, we had read that Herculaneum was better preserved due to the manner in which it was buried; I guess a molten rock and mud mixture works better for keeping stuff intact than does falling ash followed by molten rock and mud. Second, we had just one day to visit both the mountain and a town; Herculaneum is smaller so we figured that would lend itself better to a half day experience than the bigger Pompeii. And finally, Vesuvius is closer to and more accessible from Herculaneum. I don't know for certain we made the right decision here, but I know we made a good one.

To get to Herculaneum from Rome, you need to take two trains. After you arrive on the train from Rome at Napoli Centrale, you need to head downstairs and catch the local Circumvesuviana train which, as its name suggests, pretty much runs around the base of Mount Vesuvius. The ride to Herculaneum from Naples takes just a bit more than 15 minutes. From there, you can either walk downhill to the old town buried by Vesuvius or take a bus to fairly close to the top of the volcano. We elected to visit the volcano first, since it is sometimes closed due to weather. We figured if it was open when we got to the town, we'd take the bus straight up the mountain. After all, they are not going to close the excavation site.

Vesuvius viewed through our bus window. Note the good luck charms hanging from the rear view mirror.

Our choice of bus operators to Vesuvius was Vesuvio's Express, which as it turned out, was anything but an express way to get to the summit. It was our first taste of the Italian sense of urgency, which doesn't seem to be anything like the rest of the world. At least not like most places I've been. When we bought our ticket from the ticket office, we were told there was a 9:45 bus. That was awesome because that was about 20 minutes to a half an hour after we got to Herculaneum, just enough time for a quick bite to eat which turned out to be one of the most amazing things I've ever eaten. After that, we hopped on the bus.

And sat. Then we sat some more. Then a dude got on the bus and sat in the driver's seat and started taking tickets. But he wasn't the driver; he was just collecting tickets. Finally after about 20 minutes of sitting, the driver got on the bus, let some passengers off the bus to go get some food and go to the bathroom and when everyone was back on the bus, we left. At 10:10. I'm guessing the Vesuvio's Express bus really doesn't have much of a schedule. I am sure that when the bus is full, we go. If there's space left on the bus, we sit. Whatever. It's not like we didn't have the time.

The ride up to Vesuvius was one of those typical European bus experiences where we ended up on a form of transportation barely big enough to fit on the roads it was traversing. And I don't mean barely big enough to fit in the assigned lane on our side of the road; I mean barely big enough to fit on the entire road. We had the same sort of experience heading down to the Via Appia Antica in Rome but our Vesuvio's Express driver made this trip even more exhilarating.

Now, I am sure our bus driver makes the drive up and down Mount Vesuvius every day and I'm sure he knows what he's doing. I mean after all, he's a professional, right? Understandably the streets of Herculaneum are not built to serve a bus and the road up to the volcano twists and turns as roads up the sides of mountains tend to do. This drive is no doubt challenging. Right after we started our trip, we almost crushed an old woman in a car barely bigger than a Smart Car. Of course our driver used his horn to warn her off. Although we didn't know it at this point in time, the bus had two horns: one for normal beeping and one that repeated some sort of siren pattern for times when our driver was really stressed. He used the normal horn here.

After the almost crash on the first traffic circle, our driver took a couple of calls on his cell phone. Yes, the bus was a manual transmission; didn't matter. They seemed to be business related so I'm sure it's ok right? We got stuck behind some kind of small Italian car that was turning left at a stop sign and wouldn't move that produced the first use of the secondary horn then headed up the mountain for real. At one point there was a guy walking on the side of the road who seemed reluctant to stand on the curb. Our driver seemed intent to get him there even though it looked to me like there was plenty of room (normal horn for this one). As you get closer to the drop off point on the mountain, the roads get tighter as traffic gets heavier. At one point, our driver had to get out of the bus so he could tell the other drivers what to do so we could get through (no horn required here).

I guess on some level I appreciated this. I mean all I wanted to do was get there as quickly as possible safely, which we ultimately did. I'm not sure if the rosary beads and the horseshoe hanging from the rear view mirror protected us or emboldened our driver. Or maybe he only drives that way uphill when gravity is working against him. The ride down seemed to be much less stressful.

The start of the climb.

Once our driver dropped us off, the climb to the summit began in earnest. Now, before you start imagining mountaineering equipment and ropes, let me just say that there were families pushing strollers up to the top of the mountain. That's not to say that climb was a piece of cake, but it was nothing generally more stressful than walking up a steep hill.

I haven't spent a lot of time climbing mountains. In fact, I'd say I've spent relatively little time doing that but I've walked around a little bit of one or two of them and I've seen a whole lot more up close from a car. It seems to me that Vesuvius was way more barren than the other mountains I've visited recently, a list which includes Mount Rainier; the Bitterroot mountains separating Idaho from Washington state; and the Alps in southern Germany. There is way more rock than anything living on the side of the volcano, although a tree or two managed to find its way to survival and there were huge parts of the mountain covered with a pale greenish type of lichen.

At the top (or mostly there) of Vesuvius.

The path that leads to the top of Vesuvius is paved with volcanic gravel and is bounded on the drop off side of the path by a wood fence at the bottom of the path and by a wood post and rope fence towards the top of the mountain. That is where the fence is still intact. There were one or two spots where the fence had collapsed. In fact there were one or two spots where the path had collapsed. We made sure we steered clear of those parts where both had happened.

The color of the volcano is almost universally a reddish brown, unless it is covered with greenish or yellow brown plants which grow no higher than three or four inches. While the climb is not that steep in most places, the one thing that made the ascent really difficult was the wind. I'm not sure I've felt wind this strong anywhere I've been, including Gullfoss waterfall in Iceland which may have been a close second. I honestly had to hold on to my glasses at one point. The gusts are incredible and it seems like every time you walk out from behind the relative shelter of a rocky outcrop, the wind is blowing full force just to see if you can remain on your feet. It's not surprising some of the fencing is no longer in place.

It's also extremely cold. We visited on April 6 and when we were walking up, it was snowing. I'm glad I wore boots for the climb and I'm thankful I was smart enough to bring my storm shell. I packed a fleece expressly because guidebooks I had read cautioned how cold it was at the top of the mountain, then kidded myself into thinking that just because it was 65 degrees or so in Naples, that the top of Vesuvius wouldn't be that much different. I'm not sure why I thought this; Vesuvius is after all 4,000 feet above sea level. I thought it was appropriate that the only real inhospitable weather we encountered was climbing and descending Vesuvius. It was if the mountain wanted to remind us of the power it has and the destruction it has wrought in the past. It is, after all, still an active volcano.

Looking into the crater of Vesuvius.

Some of the places I go on vacation almost become check the box exercises which add little to my understanding of where I've been. Although what we did a couple of days later in Rome was awesome, I think standing on the Via Appia Antica might fall into this category; I got no real superior understanding of Roman road making by standing on the actual ancient road. Climbing Vesuvius was different. There is real value to being there in the about one hour and 45 minutes that Vesuvio's Express allows you. This is just enough time to get up and down the mountain at a good pace (like all the way to the last fenced in part) with about 20 minutes to spare.

First of all, you can't truly understand Vesuvius from afar; it takes getting up there and looking at it up close and seeing the steam come off the rocks to get a hint of this mountain's capabilities. Second, looking into the crater itself and understanding where everything comes out from is valuable (at least it was to me). Vesuvius hasn't erupted for 71 years and you can only see debris and rock in the cone today. And finally, I think you can't really understand how close Vesuvius is to Herculaneum, Naples and the rest of the towns surrounding the mountain without being up there. Naples is just nine kilometers away (about 5.5 miles) from the base of the mountain; Herculaneum is maybe one or two kilometers. Sure, you can see the volcano from the towns but judging distance for something that massive is difficult. It's easier when you've been to the top. This thing is really close to where a ton of people are living.

A morning and early afternoon climb up and down a volcano deserves some food, so before we hit the ruins of the old town of Herculaneum, a quick lunch was on the agenda. Luckily we found an excellent pizza place (Pizzeria Luna Capreso) on the right side of the street as we walked down towards the coast. 3.5 Euros and one margherita pizza later each, we completed our journey to the remains of the old town.

While there is no definitive written history of Herculaneum available, it is thought that the town was founded towards the end of the 6th century B.C. but acquired its current name when it fell under the control of the Greeks soon after its establishment. The Greeks renamed the town Herculaneum after (big surprise here) the hero Hercules. By the time Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., the town, like the rest of modern day Italy, was under Roman control. While no sort of population count is available, it is thought that approximately 4,000 people were living at Herculaneum when it was buried and almost perfectly preserved by the pyroclastic flow that engulfed it in August of 79.

Excavation at Herculaneum began in 1738, which surprised me. I would have thought digging the town out would have begun pretty much as soon as it happened but I guess people back then didn't have enough leisure time on their hands to start digging out a town buried under hardened volcanic flow. I mean by the time anyone would have reached the location of the old town, it would have been encased in solid rock. Over the last almost three hundred years, the town has slowly been unearthed. Some archaeological work in still ongoing today but the limits of what can be uncovered are getting smaller and smaller. After all, the modern day town of Herculaneum is on top of some of the unexcavated old town. They'd have to start knocking down buildings to continue their work at some point.

The first thing we noticed when we reached the south end of Via IV Novembre and arrived at the site was that the ruins of the old town were sunken. The current town of Herculaneum is located about 40 feet vertically above the old street level. We also noticed that for a seaside town, the sea was nowhere near the town; it's about half a mile to the south and west from the old wall of the town. The reason for both of these is the same, of course. When Vesuvius erupted, it added about a half a mile and 40 feet to the coast of the continent. Until you actually get to the ruins, you don't quite comprehend the magnitude of the material expelled by the volcano. It's no wonder that the eruption was as powerful as 100,000 atom bombs. I can imagine adding a half a mile to the land mass of Italy from a source over two miles away would do that.

The experience of walking around Herculaneum is really pretty eerie. You are seeing the buildings and streets of a 2,000 year old place preserved pretty well intact. Sure, there are a good number of ruins and many buildings are partially collapsed, but spending a couple of hours walking the Roman streets gives you a great picture of what life might have been like at that time.

Casa del Solane Nero, Herculaneum.

You enter the excavation site from the water side of the town. There are a series of storage rooms facing what would have been the beach for holding goods received or ready to ship. Those rooms flank a single entrance to the town. There is a modest wall, certainly not something that is going to keep the town from being taken by force, which tops the storage rooms. Today, these barrel vaulted storage areas contain skeletons, the remains of those we imagine decided they weren't leaving town based on the volcano's eruption. They are today preserved for posterity.

Climb the steps from the beach area and you come to a second level of the town, one with a bath house behind a ceremonial courtyard on the right and a couple of temples with plazas in front of them on the left. These areas are separated from the rest of the town by another wall, one a little higher than the wall above the storage areas but still nothing that is going to keep hostile folks out for very long. Once you have visited the rooms and spaces closest to the sea, the last climb takes you to the town proper.

Grande Taberna, Herculaneum.

From our perspective and I don't really know if this is right or wrong, the town was a summer resort town for the rich. Much of what we saw in our time at the site were houses and shops. Some of the houses were of a significant size, with gardens and interior courtyards. There was clearly some money here. Just like today, the best houses seemed to have ocean views whereas the smaller properties were confined to the center of town. The brochure we picked up at the visitors center generally filled in any gaps in the narrative that what's left behind starts.

The level of preservation is really pretty remarkable. I can't imagine how difficult it was to carefully excavate the town or how much they lost when they made a mistake. Pieces of pretty much everything that wasn't made of wood is still there for us to see right down to jars holding food and wine (like the picture above) to frescoes and tile work in some of the more ornate buildings to a bronze bust of the owner of one of the houses. You can understand what it was like to walk along the same roads and sidewalks as people just after the time of Christ. I don't know how many other places that you are going to experience an environment like this almost untouched by progress. Imagine things are still intact and its easy to envision what a day in the life of this town, either as a wealthy homeowner or merchant preparing lunch for those same people, was like.

The town is not just a collection of homes and stores, however. There are some public or community use buildings. I've already mentioned the temples built along the coast of the town. In addition to those, we visited the men's and women's public baths (separate buildings) and an inn and there's a sporting arena along the southwest edge of the town which is partially uncovered. The majority of the sporting arena is buried beneath other parts of present day Herculaneum, including the main visitors center for the site.

The edge of the sporting arena in Herculaneum.

All in all, the excavation site at Herculaneum is worth a couple of hours. There aren't that many different types of buildings to see but I'd definitely recommend walking around the entire site. It's very easy to cover it fairly comprehensively and you never know what you are going to see that will interest you more than some other places. The condition of some of the artwork, whether painted or assembled out of tiny pieces of ceramic tile, is absolutely amazing. To think this stuff survived a river of molten rock and then managed to stay intact while an archeological team slowly chipped it out of solid rock is astonishing. I've been to a number of historical sites, whether as excavations or reconstructions, and none has been as impressive as the afternoon I spent in Herculaneum.

I think it helps seeing both the town and the volcano in the same trip. There's a clear connection between these two and visiting both is important. Setting foot in significant points near the old shore and near the cone that emitted everything that destroyed the town made me understand a little of what might have happened in 79 A.D. The skeletons near the entrance to the town also did a pretty good job of reinforcing the message. 

I mentioned towards the beginning of this post that I think we made a good choice in visiting Herculaneum rather than Pompeii. I can't imagine that I would need to see more, meaning either a larger town or more types of buildings. The couple of hours spent here was enough for us and if Herculaneum is truly better preserved than Pompeii then I know we made the right choice. This is a good day trip from Rome. Get up early and hop on a train before 8 a.m. and you can make it there and back (we took a 7:30 p.m. train back to Rome) easily as a long day trip. I think you'll find it very enlightening if you do. After all, these tell the story of the number one volcanic eruption of all time, right?

Preserved frescoes, Sede degli Augustali, Herculaneum.

Mosaic tile artwork, Herculaneum.

Gelato

Most vacations I take usually include a food component, a quest to explore and consume as much as possible of some local specialty of wherever I happen to be in the short time I am away from home. Now you may ask, are you really going to "consume as much as possible"? The answer is yes, I really mean just that; I honestly want to eat meal after meal of local food, even if it means eating the same sorts of things every single meal of every single day. After all, I only have so much vacation time. Why waste it eating stuff I can get at home?

My recent trip to Italy was no exception to my food rule. I don't think this would come as a surprise to most people. Italian food is revered in the United States, perhaps too much sometimes in my opinion given the quality of Italian food we get here at home. There's a ton of good stuff in the Italian kitchen. Pasta, prosciutto, pizza, salami, olives, lardo, tomatoes, sopressata, squid, other cured pig products that I haven't already mentioned, basil, tiramisu. I wanted all of it in the nine days I was in country. As much as possible. Please.

If there is one food that kept coming up as a must have while I prepared for my time in Italy, it was gelato. Every guide book I read and every person I talked with that had spent time in Italy pretty much said the same thing: eat gelato because it's just amazing. Now I've never been much of an ice cream guy. Don't get me wrong, I love a scoop in some sort of dessert once every couple of months at a restaurant and I've been known to make a killer key lime pie, bourbon or rum raisin ice cream every now and then but if you open my freezer at any random time, chances are you will not find a tub of ice cream in there. But I was determined to find out what the fuss was about gelato just the same, so I made gelato my food quest for this vacation, vowing to my mom before I left that I intended to eat gelato at least once a day.

Before I get to what I found, maybe I should spend a few words on what gelato is. Plug the words "ice cream" into Google Translate and it will spit back the word "gelato." Indeed, gelato is actually the Italian word for ice cream. But there really is a difference between the two products that is worth understanding.

Start making some ice cream at home and you'll need some heavy cream, maybe some milk, some sugar and some egg yolks in addition to whatever flavoring you are shooting for. You'll need to make a custard and when the custard is cooled a bit, or if you have a better ice cream maker than I do, you'll need to churn the custard for a while at a fairly high speed to freeze it while breaking up the ice crystals that are forming as small as possible to literally intertwine the fat molecules from the cream with the ice. The result is a softish, smooth, creamy product that has grown a bit by adding air as the product has churned. For what it's worth, the USDA Standard for Ice Cream dated October 29, 1977 requires ice cream to have a minimum of 10 percent milkfat. That should start you thinking about working out right after you eat some.

The first step in making gelato also starts with making a custard, but instead of using a ton of heavy cream and egg yolks, you'll need a higher proportion of milk and maybe no yolks at all. Gelato is simply lower in fat than ice cream. While the USDA has no standard for gelato, most gelatos have between 4 and 8 percent fat content. If that seems not that much lower than the minimum 10 percent set by the USDA for ice cream, but remember the 10 percent is a minimum. Many ice creams have fat contents of 20 percent or higher. Now you are really thinking about working out after that scoop, right?

There's one more significant difference between ice cream and gelato. Gelato is generally churned at a lower speed than ice cream, which introduces less air into the product, meaning when you eat gelato, you get more flavor right away because you are tasting the product itself, not a bunch of air (or fat). Less air also means a higher freezing temperature. Ice cream is generally served at 10 degrees F. If gelato was served at that temperature it would be rock solid because of the lack of fat and air in the water heavy custard base. Gelato is therefore served at about 15 degrees warmer, yielding a smoother, softer sometimes gooier elastic treat with a much lower fat content.

So after all that science, let's get to the good stuff. Here's my blow by blow account of my Italian gelato experience from Rome to Venice.

White Chocolate Basil, Gelateria del Teatro, Rome

Go ahead and think it…what on Earth am I doing picking White Chocolate Basil gelato as my first foray into my Italian ice cream experience? Good question. I have no idea. It was not a good choice and if I had it to do all over again, I'd do it way differently.

I hit Gelateria del Teatro on my first day in Italy after seeing the Spanish Steps and on my way to stare at Castel Sant'Angelo from across the Tiber. It was, based on my research, the gelateria I was looking forward most to stopping by. It seemed to be rated very highly on every "best of" list from legitimate news and travel outlets to blog posts about gelato in Rome written by folks like me. I thought I couldn't go wrong with my flavor selection. I may have erred here. I can always blame it on the delirium of a few hours sleep in my coach seat on the way over to Europe from the United States  the night before.

If they had called this just Basil, I wouldn't have disagreed. I got a lot of herb on my palate throughout my quick experience at Gelateria del Teatro and almost no white chocolate. I was hoping for that almost cloyingly sweet cocoa butter taste to balance out the basil and it just wasn't there. Overall I found this gelato a little watery and lacking in richness. Not a good start.

Whiskey, Il Gelato di San Crispino, Rome

I know, I know. If I was disappointed in my first gelato selection as a non-traditional flavor, why would I do it again? Again, I'm not really sure. Although to be honest, I really wanted to compare this stuff to my own homemade bourbon ice cream, which is absolutely delicious.

Il Gelateria di San Crispino was the gelateria where Julia Roberts' character in Eat Pray Love found gelato nirvana. Or so I'm led to believe. I haven't actually seen the movie, mostly because I'm not really a Julia Roberts guy. I expected this place to be packed with wannabes trying to follow in her character's footsteps so I was grateful to find it almost completely empty after a day traipsing around town looking at 2,000 year old or so Roman ruins and my body in desperate need of a sweet treat.

This was a step up from Gelateria del Teatro, and not just because I picked a flavor closer to the mainstream than White Chocolate Basil. I found this scoop creamier and eggier than my first gelato experience, which was gratifying. I was getting a little nervous that the lack of fat would render most gelato thinner than I would have liked but my faith was restored a little here. I also got a nice hint of whiskey from the spoonfuls I shoved in my mouth. Not bad. My bourbon ice cream is better.

Dark Chocolate Grand Marnier, Gelateria dei Gracchi, Rome

What better way to follow a morning audience with the Pope and a trip to see early Christian catacombs than with a small tub of gelato? I couldn't think of one. So after running to catch the 660 bus at the south end of Via Appia Antica, I pulled out my Metro day pass (a bargain at seven Euros) and headed back towards St. Peter's Square and into Gelateria dei Gracchi.

Finally I think I'm on the right flavor track. This was the first chocolate gelato I tried and with one small exception, I never strayed much from that theme for the rest of my trip. This stuff was really good. The sinfulness and bitterness of the dark chocolate paired well with the orange flavor from the Grand Marnier and I got a delicious chunk of candied orange peel in one of my spoonfuls as a delicious bonus.

This was by far the best gelato I had in Rome. I appreciated the fact that the chocolate offset the thinness of the gelato mix but the fact that I still found this stuff a little watery concerned me. I left Rome with my confidence shaken but I was determined to persevere.

Chocolate Hazelnut, Vivoli, Florence

All the doubts I had about gelato from my experience in Rome were removed as soon as I shoved a spoonful of the only gelato I ate in Florence into my mouth. The gelato from Vivoli was without a doubt the best I had in Italy. I don't know if it was the right moment or I just chose the perfect flavor but this stuff was fantastic. It was noticeably runnier than all the other gelato we ate in Italy (just check the pictures). Maybe that had something to do with how good this was.

It was also far sweeter than all the gelato we ate in Rome which was an instant upgrade. The sugar took away any hint of wateriness that we found in Roman gelato and which had me worried until this point. The gelato was infused with small pieces of hazelnut which added some welcome texture and I even got a whole hazelnut in my small cup which was awesome. The chocolate was less aggressive than the dark chocolate gelato I got from Gelateria dei Gracchi which was not surprising and it was simply amazing paired with the hazelnut. Chocolate's definitely the way to go.

Caramel, La Bottega del Gelato, Pisa

Yes, I just wrote the words "chocolate's definitely the way to go" and then the very next day I get a non-chocolate gelato. I love caramel. I'd eat caramel in whatever form I could for dessert with every meal or just for snacks if I thought that was in any way healthy. So after climbing the Leaning Tower of Pisa (an interesting experience walking alternately down backward leaning and forward leaning stairs) and finding caramel gelato at our selected gelateria, I couldn't pass it up.

Like the gelato I had at Vivoli, I found La Bottega's gelato pleasantly non-watery like the stuff we had in Rome. I thought the caramel flavor was a reasonable choice - it had a faint burnt flavor on the caramel which was not unwelcome - but chocolate would probably have been better. This stuff was sweet like the chocolate hazelnut I had in Florence, although not quite as sweet. Vivoli's was better in this regard.

Chocolate Hazelnut and Stracciatella, Gelateria Il Doge, Venice

In Rome, Florence and Pisa, I noticed people getting two different flavors of gelato in a single cup or cone but I resisted this temptation, preferring to sample a single flavor uncluttered by a rival. Something about purity was my reasoning I'm sure. That all changed in Venice, for no real reason other than I just felt like it. In Venice, I never ate a single flavor from any one gelateria.

My first taste of gelato in Venice came a couple of islands north of the Ponte Accademia on our first afternoon in town. Since chocolate hazelnut had worked so well for me in Florence, I decided to opt for that again and paired it with a stracciatella which is a white ice cream dotted with dark chocolate pieces.

This gelato was good. In fact, I'd say it was the second best I had in country, likely due to my growing preference (based on two tastings) for chocolate hazelnut. It was nowhere near as good as Vivoli; it was not as sweet and had no pieces of hazelnut in it. The stracciatella was a nice pairing. The gelato was clean, tasting pretty much like slightly sweetened milk and the chocolate chips provided a nice crunch. I'd go back for some more gelato here.

Chocolate and Peanut, Gelateria Alaska, Venice

Gelateria Alaska is located just a five minute or so walk from the Ponte degli Scalzi near the main rail station in Venice. The route to get there involves going over a couple of bridges (of course) then cutting down an alley under a building that is about five feet off the ground. Needless to say, ducking is required.

So the idea behind my choice of gelato flavors here was Reese's peanut butter cups in gelato form. Didn't work. Not even close. And I suppose that made my experience at Gelateria Alaska a poor one. Not connecting the reality with your expectations has a way of yielding that result.

The texture of the gelato here was good and the resulting flavor was not watery like we found at some other gelaterias. But the chocolate wasn't sweet enough and the peanut was neither sweet nor salty. I, of course, wanted a little bit of both. Overall, this experience was like eating slightly sweetened chocolate milk with an unsalted peanut in ice cream form to go along with it.

And just like that, my Italy trip was over. I know, there are only seven gelato reviews above when I told my mother I was going to eat gelato at least once a day for the nine days I was overseas. I couldn't make it. There were just two days where our schedule didn't allow even a small cup of gelato. Maybe it's just as well. Despite all that gelato eating, I managed to lose five pounds on my trip, although that had way more to do with the walking than the gelato. Maybe I'd be only down four if I'd had those extra couple that I missed.

As you can tell, my gelato experience varied in Italy. Some were fantastic, others I would never eat again. The above commentary is not intended to be a ranking of the best gelato in Italy or even the best top to bottom of where I ate gelato in Italy in April of 2015. It's just a narrative of what I ate. If I had picked a different flavor at Gelateria del Teatro or Vivoli, the lows and highs of my experience might be reversed. But I do know one thing: when in Italy, eat gelato. Some of this stuff was otherworldly good.