Mount Vesuvius

The outline of Mount Vesuvius soared high over the vast Bay of Naples long before the first Romans came to raise their grand villas on this shore; long before the elegant Baroque churches of Spaccanapoli were forged. After 17,000 years of creaking and carving up the Campanian landscape, it is considered one of the most active volcanos on the European mainland, with a smoke-belching caldera that tops out at over 1,200 meters above the sparkling Mediterranean Sea.

Of course, most Mount Vesuvius tour guides will want to reveal the haunting ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. They are perhaps the most striking relics of the volcano's tumultuous and eruptive past. These ancient Roman resort towns were frozen in time in 79 AD when lava and ash shot down the slopes and over their mosaic-dressed bathhouses and villas. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, they offer a snapshot of the ancient life with museums, dug-out villa complexes, and even petrified human bodies. A climb to the summit of Mount Vesuvius itself is also possible. Roads weave up to the Vesuvio National Park from the eastern side of Naples city and turn into a dusty footpath that zig-zags up scree and black-stone ridges to the crater rim where you can peer into sulphur-smoking pits and cast your eyes across the sweeping Campanian coast.