More Pictures of Italy

Since I don't have anything interesting to say tonight..or else it's so late that my brain isn't functioning correctly, I'll leave you with a couple more pictures of Italy. I'm almost done scanning the first album. One more to go, then comes the hard part--sorting, filing, and labeling them all.... and uploading them to Webshots. Sigh...quite a task I've undertaken, but I think it'll be worth it in the end. Anyway, the pictures...

This is Caligula's Arch, which spans a street in the ruined city of Pompeii.


Pompeii, as most folks know, was destroyed in 79 A.D in an eruption of

Mount Vesuvius. This is what Vesuvio, as it is called in Italian, looks like today--rather what it looked like in 1991. The smaller peak on the left is actually the remainder of the original volcano. In the extreme violence of an eruption, Vesuvius quite literally blew itself up. The peak on the right is the new Vesuvius, which rose from the remains of the mountain.

Looking at the volcano as it is today makes me wonder...

Just how big was that thing originally? Wouldn't it have been a sight to behold?