Italy‘s government has announced that it is working on the construction of a high-speed train that will connect Rome and Pompeii. Local media reported that the authorities have set 2024 as the year in which this means of transportation will be available. According to Euronews, Culture minister Gennaro Sangiuliano stated that the the €35-million project is meant to offer a faster way for travelers to visit the site, which is among the main tourist attractions in Italy every year. The train line will also offer services to and from Rome’s Fiumicino airport.
Currently there is no direct route and visitors need to take the train from Rome to Naples, then a Circumvesuviana train that goes directly to Pompeii. With the hyper-speed train, times and experiences will be improved.
Pompeii was founded on a hill formed by the outpouring of volcanic material during an eruption that took place in a very distant era and not necessarily attributed to Vesuvius itself. This hill rises over the surrounding plain for about thirty meters, with an irregular course but with a marked slope from north to south and, even less pronounced, from west to east.
Near the coastal arch, this hill forms a terrace with rather steep slopes, overlooking the sea near the mouth of the river Sarno. Within the regular and straight scheme of the Roman Pompeii, it is easy to recognize the irregular design of the first Pompeian agglomeration.
Some researchers think that the city was born “naturally” by spontaneous aggregation that gradually occurred at the meeting point of two roads of great communication between the sea and the hinterland, and between the Vesuvian belt and the mountains of the Lattari of Nocera. Near this crossroads, situated approximately in the zone where the Forum would develop later, a place of commerce and a sanctuary dedicated to Apollo, which are connected to it, would have formed the first nucleus on which the city would have developed.
Pompeii was located in front of the newly founded Nocera and both controlled the trade towards the center of the Apennines and the south of Salerno, among other things. Pompeii constituted a natural and safe port for military and commercial ships. Thus the city was born for military and strategic reasons, as a culmination of the garrison and control of the territory, in the struggles that saw the contrast in Campania between the Etruscan power and the Greek power.
The development of the new high-speed train will be carried out in the framework of the Great Pompeii Project, which since 2014 has unveiled at least 45 ancient buildings of the city that was buried in lava of the Vesuvius in 79 AD.
A new train station will serve as a stop to an existing line between Rome, Naples and Salerno. An exact date for the start of its construction has not been defined. In 2022, Pompeii had almost 3 million, while the Roman Colosseum had around 7 million. The train link seeks to increase the number of visitors to the citadel of Vesuvius.
