Under the shadow of Vesuvius, in the middle of a modern working town, there is a Roman villa that was buried in the same eruption of AD 79 that destroyed Pompeii. Torre Annunziata stands on the ancient site of Oplontis, a seaside suburb of Pompeii, and its two excavated villas are part of the UNESCO listing of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata, inscribed in 1997. Villa A, the grander one, is famous for its frescoes and is linked with Poppaea Sabina, the wife of Nero. Villa B, the one on this ride, is different, a commercial building where wine and other goods were stored and traded, with a large courtyard and many amphorae found when it was dug up.
The eruption buried the coast under metres of ash and pumice, and the excavation in the twentieth century of buildings preserved by it, with painted walls, furniture and even bread, gave scholars a priceless record of Roman life. At Oplontis, the villas stand a few metres below the modern street level, and a visit to Villa B takes you down into the Roman world through the middle of a town. Vesuvius, a grey cone with a broad crater, dominates the skyline, and the smell of the sea mixes with the smell of exhaust.
Torre Annunziata was for centuries a centre of pasta making, and the dry pasta of nearby Gragnano still trades on that tradition. The Bay of Naples is one of the most beautiful in the world, and the old coast road leads to Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast.
Riding around Naples demands nerve. Traffic is dense and fast, drivers are inventive, and scooters weave through gaps. The surface has potholes and basalt paving stones, which are slippery in the wet. The road to the crater of Vesuvius, a series of tight bends climbing the cone, is worth the effort, with a view across the bay. Torre Annunziata has fuel, shops and restaurants, and Boscotrecase and Trecase are neighbouring towns. A pizza and a coffee are the right lunch. Spring and autumn are the best seasons.