Driving south, the road to Naples is lined with local specialties like Buffalo Mozzarella - too watery to cook with but served sliced with fresh tomatoes and olive oil - and really Real Neapolitan Pizza. The road leads to the city of Pompeii, sitting in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.

Pompeii was built in 7 B.C. and lasted until the early light of a late August morning in 79 A.D. Overcome by Vesuvius' eruption of rock and ash, the city disappeared from maps for nearly 1,700 years. Re-discovered in the 18th century, it was realized that the ash preserved a good deal of the lost city, fruit eerily sitting untouched in jars, and a bakery with loaves of bread sat, waiting to be eaten.

The houses boast statues in the front atrium once greeting visitors on marble floors, with multiple bedrooms and studies and large gardens out back. Art dots the walls that were once the city's marketplace, the painted walls depicting what the ancient vendors sold there. There is a public square where thousands gathered on white limestone grounds to listen and watch political speeches and an amphitheater with a capacity of 20,000 where residents were entertained by gladiators who fought to the death.


Some of the bodies were preserved as well, and there are plaster casts of the dead, who ran from the erupting volcano clutching their jewelry and their coins, and have remained, nearly 2,000 years later, frozen in prayer, or clutching at their throats, captured in their final moments of life.


Today more than 3 million reside in the surrounding towns in the shadow of the mountain which threatens to explode again, at any time.

The land is a deep, fertile green and, despite the February chill, is already sprouting lemon trees from within. The potential for disaster is not even a passing thought for a civilization that lives its life in a passing moment.


'Piano, piano, piano' they will passionately remind you.

Slow.

Down.



(Springtime in Italy- Roma and Firenze: here