Take advantage of your transfer between Rome and Naples or the Amalfi Coast to visit Pompeii and the Vesuvius area.   

You will be visiting one of the most extraordinary places on the face of the earth.  Discover what life must have been like over 2000 years and be amazed at how civilized this ancient city was.  Buried by the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius in 79 AD, this tragedy killed 20,000 residents and buried the entire city. 

Excavations are still taking place in Pompeii and you will be interested in seeing how complicated and difficult of an undertaking this is.  The excavations are open to the public between 8:30am and 6:00pm every day of the week. If you like you can add to your service, a professional guide specialized for the ruins of Pompeii.

The excavations of Pompeii show you a Roman city frozen in time from the time it was buried by Vesuvius on August 24, 79AD.  Much of what you see today in Pompeii has been very well preserved.  Pompeii was a lively place with a relatively high standard of living.  Annexed to the Roman Republic in 89BC, Pompeii underwent a large infrastructural development.  From this period, you will see the amphitheatre, a palestra (the equivalent of our modern day health clubs) with a swimming pool, and an amazing aqueduct that provided water to more than 25 street fountains.

When Vesuvius erupted, the city of Pompeii had about 20,000 inhabitants, and was only one of many towns located around the base of Mount Vesuvius.  The area had a large populations due to the prosperity of the region’s agricultural fertility. After thick layers of ash covered Herculaneum and Pompeii, the two towns were abandoned and eventually completely forgotten.  In 1599 the towns were found by an architect named Fontana who was digging a new course for the river Sarno, but it then took more than 150 years before serious excavation “rediscovered” Herculaneum in 1738 and Pompeii in 1748.

The view of Vesuvius from the golf of Naples is incredibly beautiful and you will love taking souvenir photos and learning about its history.  Vesuvius is 1281 meters high and the more energetic can even hike to its summit and look down into one of the craters.  The first volcano to be systematically studied, an observatory was built on Vesuvius in the 1840’s and is still operative.  Fortunately, the volcano hasn’t had an eruption since the 1940’s.