Urban traffic in Pompeii

There are so many aspects of Pompeii that fascinate me, it's hard so choose a single one to focus upon. I choose it not because it first or of any great importance, but simply because in opening a folder it was the subject of the picture that caught my eye. Urban traffic.

Two millennia ago the city stopped -forgive the cliché- dead in its tracks. Today it bustles with tourists compelled by the fascination of times past and origins lost. They stroll down streets, past houses, water fountains restaurants and shops that have been uninhabited and in disuse for two thousand years and wonder, a happy few research and speculate. Any original information will be the fruit of their labor, I can only recount what I have learned and remember.

As you walk through the streets of Pompeii one of the most striking features of the city is the very deep grooves left on the paving stones by heavy wheel traffic.

The streets were very narrow and carts, and carriages had very little room to maneuver before hitting one of the cubs or one of the stepping stones in the middle of the road. The wheels left marks on the stones which help determine the way the wheel was traveling and allows us to determine whether the street was one way, two way and which way traffic flowed. Some streets comported two way traffic but most were one way. Here are some typical streets.




Streets wide enough for four stepping stones were often two way.

That traffic was not haphazard is evident, therefore city traffic was a planned activity, and since there are no surviving or obvious traffic signs I guess that traffic laws were probably enforced by the population. People knew which direction traffic flowed and how to get places and if everyone followed the rules traffic would flow. However, there is no reason to believe Italians 2000 years ago were any more sedate than they are today, and I imagine that traffic disputes occurred daily and involved a great deal of gesticulation and shouting.

When trucks drive into the city of Sao Paulo there are numerous individuals camped on the side of the road offering guide services. These people will get into the incoming truck, direct the driver to his destination in the city and help unload the cargo for a fee. I can't help but imagine that similar services may have been offered at the entrance gates to Pompeii.

An uninformed stranger driving into the city to make a delivery could easily drive the wrong way in a major thoroughfare and stall traffic around the city. There is no room to maneuver an ox cart to turn it around, and oncoming traffic would also be hard pressed to back-up. All one could do in this situation, I imagine, is shout loudly and gesticulate grandiosely.

Stepping stones are allover the city. The curbs were high to keep both traffic and water off the sidewalks. The roads arch in the middle directing water to the curb and the city is on a slope towards the ocean. Water from the overflowing fountains probably flowed continuously in the curb and the stepping-stones were necessary for pedestrian traffic to remain dry.

The stepping stones seem high, but ancient carts and carriages cleared them with ease, the curbs were also very high to contain the water flow. Chamber pots and other waste were often dumped in the flow, not to mention the waste from the horses and oxen on the road, if you ask me the curbs and stepping stones were not high enough.



Modern carts require a little ingenuity to move around the ruins.

Roman law included provisions for road construction, road standards and even traffic accidents.

The few two way roads were often wider than one-way roads. This is a one way road and you can see the width of the groove left by the wheels and gauge the width of the street by the umbrella.


Here is a two way street that is about the same width of the one way street.

There are two sets of wheel tracks, one from the left gutter to the wooden end of the umbrella and the other from the right gutter to the umbrella's hook handle. I think there would have been a great deal of shouts and gestures on this street. Unless it was one way in the morning and the opposite way in the afternoon... who knows (but then why not just stay in the middle of the road?)

There are a few clever details that are often overlooked by tourists. The sidewalks and roads leading into the forum are studded with embedded white pebbles that stand out under low lighting conditions. At night someone walking with an oil lamp would have a better sense of where he is by looking at the sidewalk since the frequency of the white pebbles increases a you approach the Forum.

Here similar pebbles were used as a welcome doormat in front of a rather wealthy house. Debate still rages over the "H". OK, fine! Maybe it doesn’t 'rage'...but would you have me say that debate whimpers about the "H"? I thought not.


Throughout the city you will also find holes bored through the curbstones. I was told by a guard that they were used to tie horses. However, some were placed in narrow streets leading into the Forum, these would have been some of the busiest streets in town and rather inconvenient places to run smack-dab into one or more tethered horses. They may have been used to fasten awnings that hung over the sidewalk on storefronts. It's a less likely hypothesis.


If they were indeed used to fasten bridles it only goes to show that traffic in ancient Pompeii was as inconvenient as traffic in major cities today.