(by Silvia Lambertucci)
The earthenware pots with the remains of the most delicious dishes, from kid to snails and even a sort of "paella" with fish and meat together.
The wine 'corrected' with beans and ready for serving.
And a large "L" counter decorated with images so realistic that they almost appear in 3D: a pair of mallard geese, an amazing rooster, a large dog on a leash on which a joker had graffitied a homophobic insult.
In Pompeii, where excavations have never stopped even in the days of the lockdown, a Thermopolium comes to light almost intact, in fact a grocery store selling street food,
genre much loved by the citizens of the Roman colony.
Everything almost stopped in time on the day of the eruption, fixed in eternity by the pyroplastic material, which sealed its extraordinary colors and preserved fundamental elements to reconstruct the food habits and habits of the Romans of two thousand years ago.
"A photograph of that disastrous day", comments the director of the Archaeological Park Massimo Osanna in an interview with ANSA.
And even the Minister of Culture Franceschini applauds, underlining the fruit of the teamwork that has been taking place in Pompeii in recent years: "A great example for the recovery of the country"
.
Pompeii, the street food shop returns to light
THE BOTTEGA 'DI GRIDO' IN THE MOST FREQUENTED SQUARE
Located in Regio V, in front of a large square on the corner between the Vicolo dei Balconi and the large house of the Silver Wedding, the new Thermopoly had been identified and partially excavated in 2019, when the footprint left on the ash from one of the large wooden doors and the balcony on the first floor had been found, together with a first part of the counter, the one that overlooked the square, with its beautiful marble fountain.
Perhaps to allude to the monument outside, says Osanna, "that first part of the counter was decorated with a mythological theme, a Nereid riding an extraordinary hippocampus with a body transformed into a rainbow of colors"
.
SOUP WITH PORK, FISH AND SNAILS AND 'CORRECT' WINE WITH BEANS
But it was the subsequent excavations, which reached their climax in recent weeks
, which,
together with the extraordinary decorations, the floor inlaid with polychrome marble and the complete picture of the environment
,
gave back the surprise of a large amount of information that
This workshop of antiquity will add to the knowledge of history
.
The remains of the dishes on the menu, for example, "with the joint use of mammals, birds, fish and snails in the same dish", as the archaeozoologist Chiara Corbino explains in her report, in fact a kind of paella antelitteram.
Or the particular treatment of the wine, as the archaeobotanist Chiara Comegna recounts, which was corrected with broad beans (they served to whiten it and at the same time to correct its taste) but also preserved in a dolo that had a tile on its bottom to separate the legumes from the liquid and avoid mixing the wine together with its unpleasant bottom.
Not to mention the skeleton of a dog found one step away from the counter, right next to the painting depicting a dog on a leash: adult but of such modest size as to suggest that the selection of pet breeds was already practiced at the time.
A research that is only in its infancy and that promises to have "very interesting developments", underlines Osanna, underlining that the investigations are now continuing in the closed laboratories.
ANOTHER PIECE OF THE TRAGEDY
But what the new Thermopoly seems to tell is also
another piece of that devastating human tragedy that was the eruption of 79 AD
. The remains of two men were found in the room, with a second room at the back and an upper floor. One of the two, about fifty, according to the hypothesis of the anthropologist Valeria Amoretti, was lying on a bed in the back room, the bones of the other - except for a foot - were instead found in a large vase, with all probabilities hidden there by excavators perhaps even of the seventeenth century who had investigated a part of this environment. "The shop seems to have been closed in a hurry and abandoned by the owners - explains Osanna - but it is possible that someone, perhaps the oldest man, remained inside and died in the first phase of the eruption, crushed by the collapse The second could instead be a thief or a hungry fugitive, who came in to scrape together something to eat and surprised by the burning vapors with the lid of the pot he had just opened in his hand ". What really happened will be understood later. In the meantime, the director of the Park anticipates, the construction site is moving forward, "we are working on the consolidation and restoration of the structure, we will also reposition the balcony".
The idea is to open the Thermopolium to visitors, pandemic permitting, already in spring, for Easter, setting up a path that also passes by the construction site of the house of the Silver Wedding, a wonder closed to the public for decades. In fact, Osanna, who in a few months will hand over the deliveries to his successor, spreads his arms and smiles: "In such a moment it is nice to think of a gift for our visitors".