The 22nd August 79 A.D. would have been a very bad day to be visiting the city of Pompeii or the town of Herculaneum. In the course of that day and the day after it, the two Roman settlements were famously destroyed and buried under volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of the nearby Mount Vesuvius. At the time, news of the destruction would have spread to every corner of the Roman Empire, although as the centuries wore on the locations of the towns were forgotten. Pompeii and Herculaneum became time capsules, buried under the Vesuvian ash until workmen happened across the ruins one thousand six hundred years later. The historical, cultural and archaeological value of the find was not lost on the inhabitants of eighteenth-century Naples, and luckily for us, the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum survive to this day.
Vesuvius is still active, and it will probably remain active for thousands of years yet, but thankfully modern Vulcanologists are a bit better at seeing eruptions coming than the ancient Pompeiians were – which means that the twenty-first century is a great time to visit the Bay of Naples! Naples itself is one of the great jewels of the Mediterranean, a wonderfully-preserved maze of streets ranging from huge broad plazas to tiny narrow alleys that just beg to be explored. A mixture of architecture from the last two thousand years makes this a must-see for anyone who’s passing through or even near the Campania region. A thriving modern nightlife that seamlessly mixes with traditional street-festivals makes a night out in Naples one of the best times you can have on mainland Europe, all set against the backdrop of a magnificent medieval harbour and the forbidding fortifications of the Castel Nuovo, the Sant’Elmo fortresss and the island Castel dell’Ovo. For the best views in the area, walk to the summit of Mount Vesuvius. A bus will get you half way up, and you have to do the last stretch yourself, but it’s more than worth it. In front of you the bay stretches away magnificently to a distant horizon, and behind you there’s a steep, horrifying slope that leads down into the impossibly deep crater of the volcano.
Pompeii and Herculaneum themselves could, of course, occupy a visitor for days or weeks. A small branch railway exists to take visitors along the bay to the ruins – it’s a short journey which is worthwhile in itself for the idyllic view. The ruined towns are one of Europe’s most beautiful, humbling and eerie sights. The huge networks of empty streets are perfectly preserved, and in places the solid style and uniform construction of the Roman architecture seem strangely modern. The most macabre sights of all are the sets of reconstructed eruption victims - the ash that fell on Pompeii hardened around the corpses of its suffocating citizens, and their bodies rotted away to nothing in the centuries that followed. The cavities left deep within the solidified ash were later filled with plaster and excavated by enterprising archaeologists, leaving only plaster casts that show exactly how the unfortunate Romans died. A grim but fascinating sight.