{"id":1628,"date":"2017-08-14T16:04:16","date_gmt":"2017-08-14T21:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=1628"},"modified":"2025-03-03T19:53:39","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T01:53:39","slug":"i-was-in-hell-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2017\/08\/14\/i-was-in-hell-again\/","title":{"rendered":"I Was in Hell (again)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>I\u2019ve been to hell (again)<\/p>\n

August 14, 2017<\/p>\n

I say again because you may recall last year hell was in Lalibela, Ethiopia.<\/p>\n

That was then.\u00a0 This is 2017, and hell\u2014the Roman entrance to it at least\u2014is but a short cab ride from our boat in Pozzuoli, Italy.\u00a0 I went there today, and discovered it is really Campi Flegrei, an active volcano that has \u201cstreaming jets of sulphurous vapour at temperatures of 160 degrees C\u2026..\u201d Set in a caldera, hell has fumaroles with traces of the \u201crare red arsenic Sulphur crystal called Realgar\u2026\u201d \u00a0For those who have never been to hell, I can report that it resembles places at Yellowstone.<\/p>\n

This area is historic both in a geological and an historical sense.\u00a0 In addition to being the entrance to hell, the volcanic activity is in the \u201cepicenter of the cyclic phenomenon of the rising and lowering of the ground level in the Phlegrean Fields known as brandisim.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m quoting from the brochure, since I couldn\u2019t possibly make it up.\u00a0 The rising of the land in 1538 created the youngest mountain in Europe\u2014Monte Nuovo, 430 feet high, that originated when lava shot out of the earth. I can see it from the ship.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Historically, too, Pozzuoli was an important port in the early history of Rome. Some vestiges of that background remain, including a huge coliseum, one of the largest in the empire, and a partially reconstructed (and equally huge) marketplace. It lost its importance as Rome built ports closer to the city. I think we\u2019re about 150 miles away.<\/p>\n

Still, what we had come to see was not hell, or still more Roman ruins, but a picturesque 17th<\/sup> century village on the island of Procida , the smallest island in the Bay of Naples. To get there, we boarded a public ferry, filled with merry makers; tomorrow being Assumption Day, many Italians were getting a head start on vacationing. (In addition, the earlier ferry broke down and so we had a double load; \u201cthis is Italy,\u201d quipped our program director).<\/p>\n

Fortunately, no one but residents can bring cars to the island during the summer\u2014fortunately, because the roads, if one can call them that, are barely wide enough for a well-greased car to slide through, and there are probably 11,000\u2014one for every resident on the 14 km island.\u00a0 We took taxis for our tour of the island, which featured spectacular views of the Bay of Naples, the commensurate \u201cspecial\u201d church, this one with a baroque interior hiding behind a 1890s fa\u00e7ade. Its claim to fame is a wooden vaulted ceiling. The town of Corricella, at the bottom of a cliff, is distinguished by \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>pastel-colored houses, supposedly a nod to the fishermen there, who wanted to be able to see their houses from the sea. The colorful appearance is striking.<\/p>\n

The other claim to fame for Procida is that the prize winning movie \u201cIl Postino\u201d was shot there (and one of the other islands we\u2019ve been to). We had lunch at the restaurant where the movie was filmed\u2014and now I feel compelled to see the movie!<\/p>\n

In other words, I had a hell–err, heck, of a day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been to hell (again) August 14, 2017 I say again because you may recall last year hell was in Lalibela, Ethiopia. That was then.\u00a0 This is 2017, and hell\u2014the Roman entrance to it at least\u2014is but a short cab ride from our boat in Pozzuoli, Italy.\u00a0 I went there today, and discovered it is … Continue reading “I Was in Hell (again)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malta-and-italy-august-2017"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1628"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8543,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions\/8543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}