The Greeks really started to invest in and expand Pompeii around 450 BC, but a couple of centuries later, it would ultimately pass into the control of the Roman Empire. By the year 78 AD, it was a large, affluent, well-to-do town in the Roman Empire, which was already more than 3x older than the modern-day United States.
Oh yeah, and it also sat right next to a giant volcano called Mount Vesuvius.
In 79 AD, Vesuvius erupted, releasing approximately 100,000x the energy of the atomics bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII COMBINED. At this point in history, the Bay of Naples was already a densely populated area, which made this one of the deadliest eruptions in history. Pompeii, as well as a few other towns in the area, such as Herculaneum, were pretty much wiped off the map, their inhabitants burned and/or suffocated by the violent pyroclastic flows.
Barcelona is the last Spanish city that is going to be covered in the #ThrowBackThursday series. I came here during my study abroad in 2012, during which I lived in 313 miles inland, in Madrid. Why did I choose to study abroad in Madrid? The short answer is that I didn’t. Madrid was, incredibly, the only study abroad option in the entire world that would count towards both my major and my minor. So if I wanted to go abroad, the choice was already made for me. But, in my mind, Barcelona was “the place to be” in Spain. Ideally, I would have lived in Barcelona.
When I finally arrived in Barcelona, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting…
Are you a "glass half full" or a "glass half empty" kind of person?
I think that your opinion on Sicily will pretty much answer that question for you. I like to think of myself as somebody who is able to look on the bright side of things, and to me, Sicily was beautiful. However, it was definitely also quite gritty. Today, we’re going to take a deep dive into all that garbage and graffiti and browse though some of my favorite examples of Sicilian street art.
Seriously, nothing can prepare you for how creepy this place is... but I'm getting ahead of myself.
I'll start from the beginning. The Capuchin Catacombs are always placed highly on people's lists of things to do and see in Palermo, and it's easy to see why. It's just SO outrageous! Before we dive into this article, I've got some serious explaining to do, because you are sure to have questions. I know that for me, the biggest question I had in all of this was just "why." Why does this place exist?
Buckle in, kids!
In the last article, we covered a lot of ground. I was a little out of breath by the time I finished writing it! But Palermo deserves to have some serious time spent, just taking it in, exploring. So now that you've been brought fully up to speed on the many historic layers of this city, I want to take a deep dive with you and just get out on the streets of Palermo.
Are you ready for a big dose of Sicily’s capital city?
Prior to actually coming here, I had heard mostly negative reviews of Palermo. After traveling through the rest of Italy, people love to dish about how dirty Palermo is. And Bourdain's episode on Sicily painted Palermo with similarly discouraging colors. People also brought up the Mafia a lot when discussing Palermo, alluding to connections between the systemic corruption of government and the poor up-keep of the streets. A few weeks out, I was sort of expecting Palermo to be a dump, but then I had an Italian friend rave about how much she loves this city, describing it as 'decaying and decadent.' This put my expectations on par with Havana, Cuba, and that made me really excited!
Just south of Messina, this gorgeous Sicilian town sits on the edge of a mountain, looking out over the Ionian Sea towards Calabria. It's population is just over 11,000, but it gets vastly more tourists every month. Indeed, Taormina has been a fashionable travel destination for a few hundred years now. Yes, you read that right—we're talking centuries of tourism here.
Just 2 hours south from Catania, down the eastern coast of Sicily, sits a the city of Siracusa (a.k.a. Syracuse). You may recognize this name from history books about the very distant past. Syracuse makes appearances in tales and legends that stemmed from a great many famous Empires over the course of Mediterranean history, most notably the Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines. Oh, and it makes a cameo appearance in the Bible. It was described by early Roman officials as "the greatest Greek city and the most beautiful of them all."
Suffice to say, this place has some serious history behind it. Are you ready to see what’s going on in 2018?
Catania is the second largest city in Sicily. The population of Catania proper is about 320,000, but there are a combined 1.1 million people who live in the metro area. In Italy overall, Catania is the 10th biggest city, and the 7th largest metro area. This is a major population center for Sicily, second only to Palermo, which will be our last stop on this trip. Catania is not the most well-known place, but it's definitely not small either. It's actually really big, especially by Sicilian standards. But Catania's burgeoning population should be surprising. This isn't exactly prime real estate.
Why? Because of Mount Etna.
First of all, it's pronounced "mar-sa-chlok." There are about 3,500 people that live in Marsaxlokk and they are called the Xlukkajri (sorry, no idea how to pronounce that one). Though it might look like vacation paradise (and it totally is) Marsaxlokk is also a real town. The waterfront is the most iconic area of this town but turn off of Xatt is-Sajjieda down any side street and you will be quickly find yourself in everyday Malta. Similar to Valletta, the buildings are all a sandy color of beige, giving the impression that you are walking through an entire city of sandcastles. It's pretty picturesque.
