Jewish Naples and Pompeii ruins

A full-day tour combining Jewish Naples and the ruins of Pompeii, comfortably done as a day trip from Rome — the high-speed train reaches Naples in a little over an hour.

Pompeii, and the Jews who were there

You walk a Roman town that stopped in 79 CE: its streets, its shops, its two theatres, its bath houses and its advertising, still painted on the walls. The population was mixed — Romans, freedmen, slaves, pagans, and Jews.

The evidence for the last group is small and very specific. Graffiti scratched on one wall reads Sodoma Gomora. And among the fish-sauce jars from the city’s garum industry, one is labelled garum castum — fish sauce prepared to Jewish dietary rules. Somebody in Pompeii was keeping kosher, and somebody else was manufacturing for that market.

Pompeii or Herculaneum

The two sites were destroyed by the same eruption in different ways, and they preserve different things. Pompeii was buried under ash and pumice fall and is vast — you get scale, streets, public buildings. Herculaneum was hit by pyroclastic flow that carbonised rather than burned: wooden beams, doors, furniture and upper storeys survive there and nowhere else. Herculaneum is far smaller and takes half the time.

If you only have one day, Pompeii. If you want to understand how Romans actually lived indoors, add Herculaneum and the MAV, the virtual archaeological museum next to the site.

The day

• Jewish Naples — the Synagogue in Via Cappella Vecchia and the former Giudecca
• Pompeii, guided
• Optionally Herculaneum and the MAV, or Mount Vesuvius, in place of the Naples half

Practical information

• From Rome: feasible as one long day. Trains and transfers are arranged; the Naples–Pompeii leg is by car
• Pompeii is enormous and almost entirely unshaded. In July and August, an early start is not optional
• Ancient paving throughout — proper shoes, and worth flagging in advance if anyone has mobility limits
• Kosher meals for the day can be arranged; there is nothing kosher on site

For the Naples half on its own, see the Jewish Naples tour, and the guide to Jewish Naples.