Pompeii, Italy

I have wanted to go to Pompeii for ages, and now that my youngest is immersed in ancient Roman and Greek civilizations, I felt like I had a really good excuse to go.

Mount Vesuvius is pictured here and it is the only active volcano on mainland Europe. It is best known because of the eruption in A.D. 79 that destroyed the city of Pompeii, but  Mount Vesuvius is considered to be one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world due to the large population of the city of Naples and the surrounding towns on the slopes nearby.  With almost no warning, the citizens of Pompeii were covered in rock and debris from the volcano (see that big dip in the mountain?  That used to be filled in solid)--Naples and the area surrounding Vesuvius face the same risks if it erupted as those in the ancient world--hopefully theri evacaution would be swifter.
The volcano is classed as a complex stratovolcano because its eruptions typically involve explosive eruptions as well as pyroclastic flows. Vesuvius and other Italian volcanoes, such as Campi Flegrei and Stromboli, are part of the Campanian volcanic arc. The Campanian arc sits on a tectonic boundary where the African plate is being subducted beneath the Eurasian plate.

What Vesuvius left us to find is spectacular, and unique, not because Pompeii was so special a place.  It was not--it was one of dozens of cities its size in the Roman empire at that time.  What is unique is that it was buried for centuries, and so all of it's treasures were safely below ground and away from the medieval plunderers who ransacked the rest of Europe--so we have a chance to really see the splendor that people lived in  (so long as they were not slaves) all those many years ago.  Pictures do not do it justice--go and see it for yourself.  It is worth a special trip.