Via dell'Abbondanza, Pompeii: No One Stopped Us
Vesuvius buried this city in 79 AD. The armor predates the warning system. Field notes from Via dell'Abbondanza, where the ruins asked no questions.
FIELD NOTES
Armor Field Note: Via dell'Abbondanza, Pompeii, Italy
HK7335 and I entered the excavation site from the Porta Marina entrance on the western edge of the ruins, weapons secured, Beskar catching the Campanian sun in a way that apparently required documentation by no fewer than eleven separate civilians.
The site archaeologists moved toward us with the practiced urgency of people who have rehearsed this exact conversation and lost it before. One spoke at length in Italian. HK7335 translated the relevant portions. The bread ovens are still sealed. The painted signs above the tavern doorways still advertise prices. Two thousand years of preservation, and the first thing compromised by our arrival was a guided tour group that stopped following their guide entirely.
Vesuvius is visible from the street. It does not look dormant. The site opens at 0900 local and closes at 1930 in summer months, earlier in winter. Arrive at first entry if you want the stepping stones to yourself. The stones are original Roman infrastructure, elevated to keep foot traffic above the street, which also functioned as the city's primary drainage system. The wheel ruts worn into the volcanic paving are deep enough to notice. Six meters of ash held this place intact for nearly seventeen centuries before anyone started digging.
Pompeii is accessible by Circumvesuviana train from Naples Centrale, approximately thirty minutes. The Porta Marina entrance is the closest to the station. The Archaeological Park of Pompeii manages multiple site entrances, and crowd levels by midday make the western streets considerably harder to move through in full Mandalorian kit.
The man who asked us to leave eventually returned to his group and resumed the tour, pausing once to look back at us still standing in the street above the sewer line, which he did not ask us to leave a second time.
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