(Apologies for the delay on this one – things have been hectic since I got home. Well, hectic-ish. Next one will be along sooner.)

This is going to be all about Pompeii. Well, almost. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who’s had a look at my bookshelves or knows of my historical preferences. As much as the Romans could be an unpleasant bunch, they had an unrivalled influence on western civilisation, and there’s enough of their writings and edifices that remain to get a pretty strong idea of what life in their time was like.

Pompeii, that most famous relic of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., demonstrates both just how much of ancient Rome we have access to and how distant we still are from it. Streets of fast-food vendors, sports stadiums, the mansions of the suburban rich, and brothels in the back alleys of the red light district are all there to be seen. However, so are stepping stones across streets that allowed citizens to keep their feet out of the rivers of sewage that flowed downhill. So while a lot of Rome might have been familiar to us, there’s a lot more that would have given us pause. (More on that later.)

A guided tour through Pompeii is a good introduction to the city that Vesuvius buried, but you ought to set aside more time to explore afterwards, as no tour is going to do any more than hit some of the highlights. Two of the most impressive parts of the city—the Villa of the Mysteries and the Amphitheatre—lie at diametrically opposite parts of the site, and most tours will stick to the central section instead.

To complete your Pompeiian experience, there are a couple of options. You could visit Herculaneum, the other victim of Vesuvius, which I didn’t do, or you could head to the National Archaeological Museum, which I did. That museum is split between the relics of Pompeii and the Farnese Collection, which is one of the finest gatherings of classical sculpture in the world, outdone only (possibly?) by the Pope’s own collection in the Vatican. At least one of the Farneses was Pope too, so there’s been some cross-pollination.

That collection certainly shouldn’t be missed, but the Pompeiian relics are just as interesting. The mosaics and frescoes are some of the best you’ll see anywhere, including the famous mosaic of Alexander the Great from the House of the Faun (a copy of it now sits in the original house in Pompeii). Rather more amusing is the collection of Roman erotica that’s tucked away into a corner of the museum, guarded by a warning (in Italian) that kids aged 14 or less maybe should go get their culture somewhere else.

You see, one of the things that the excavation of Pompeii did was to puncture forever the image of Romans as dignified elderly types, delivering fine speeches to other dignified elderly types. Whatever truth there is to that image, the Romans were also open and frank about sex and obsessed with dicks. (all right—phalluses.) Even the moralistic Augustus was said to have his own private book of porn. The museum’s collection of erotica includes a range of frescoes kept away from the general public and some completely explicit sculptures, including a Mercury adorned with multiple penises, Pan having sex with a goat, and a winged dick suspended from a chain. Frankly, after roaming these rooms for a little while, you’ll run out of synonyms for male genitalia and need a breather. Or possibly a cold shower.

Naples, much like Palermo, only really comes alive at night. Once the sun has gone, people crowd the shopping district that runs downhill from the National Archaeological Museum, past the Piazza Dante and along the Via Toledo. Perhaps it was just that it was a Friday night, but it certainly seemed to me like everyone was out and having a good time. At least for as long as the weather held—before the night was through, the night was rent by a particularly impressive storm, with Jupiter tossing around thunderbolts a couple of time every minute.

Luckily for me, I was already safe indoors and away from the torrential rain at that stage, having circled back to my lodgings via the Piazza del Plebiscito and the impressively solid Castel Nuovo. Still, if there’s any fitting way to end a visit to the vicinity of Vesuvius, it’s with a demonstration of the fact that natural forces are to be cowered before whenever they start to throw their weight around.