Walking around the ruins of Pompeii, the volcano, Vesuvius, is a constant presence. You see it beyond the crumbled columns. It appears through an old doorway. And you can glimpse its peak at the top of an old stairway leading down to the street. It feels very close to the ruined city. You really get a sense of how futile trying to escape from its wrath would have been.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, before the volcano exploded and unleashed its fury on towns like Pompeii below, the inhabitants weren’t aware of its power. The modern day population is very much aware, but Vesuvius gives as much as it takes. Its slopes are incredibly fertile. Everywhere you look in the Bay of Naples, there are lemon and orange trees.

Lemons – the gift of Vesuvius

There are so many lemons, in fact, that the locals seem to be at a loss as to what to do with them. In tourist towns like Sorrento, every other shop seems to be lemon-themed. Bottles of limoncello are sold, alongside lemon sweets and lemon cake. Oh, and enormous lemons the size of melons. I’m still not sure why any tourist would buy one of those.

So the fertility of the place means it’s worth the risk of living there. Most of the time it’s a paradise. The last time the old volcano erupted was during the Second World War, when British and American tanks got covered in ash.

Still, Vesuvius hovers ominously above the region. A constant reminder of what it’s capable of.

The ruins of Pompeii

The ruins of Pompeii, themselves relics of the volcano’s power, are utterly fascinating. Even with all the tourists, it’s possible to find some peaceful spots. I crept into an old garden not too far from the Forum near the entrance and had about ten minutes there to myself.

As I stared out toward Vesuvius behind a wall that had seemingly collapsed in such a way as to reveal its destroyer beyond, the wind suddenly picked up. The breeze rustled through the leaves of the tree to my right and, holding the exposed stone column to my left, I tried to imagine the place as it would have been.

What would the ancient inhabitants of Pompeii make of us? I wondered.

What if we could flick a switch and co-inhabit this space again, just for 10 minutes or so? What would these ancient people think of their 21st century cousins? These strange beings with wires hanging from their ears down to little metallic tablets in their hands?

What would we talk about?

Looking for ghosts

I’d probably head to one of the bars/restaurants and try to strike up a conversation. Every other building in Pompeii seems to be one of these spaces. With holes in the counter that were once filled with terracotta pots. Each with a different type of food, or wine.

How would we break the ice? Perhaps after a glass of wine they would point to a fresco on the wall of a famous gladiator. And then I’d show them a picture of Lionel Messi on my smartphone.

Pompeii shows us how we’ve changed, and how we haven’t. In some buildings the frescos on the wall are all about sex. They were about as obsessed with it as we are today. They loved a scandal, too. So maybe it wouldn’t be too difficult to find something to talk about after all.

Visiting the past

One of the reasons I love history is the notion of retracing the steps that others have walked, hundreds or thousands of years before. I love the idea that I can touch a stone column in Pompeii that a Roman senator might have rested against 2,000 years before me.

Time is strange. We live and think in the present for the most part. We don’t really consider the generations to come after we leave. Who, of all the thousands of people who lived in Pompeii before the eruption buried them in time, would have imagined that thousands of years later tourists would be taking pictures of their garden wall? I imagine they were thinking of more mundane, day-to-day things.

Today, visitors to Pompeii huddle together and strain to hear a guide’s description of a house where, 2,000 years earlier, a couple may have stood and argued about whose turn it was to wash their clothes.

Perhaps 2,000 years from now, a super being of our own creation might stumble upon a laptop or a pair of headphones and deem it worthy of being displayed somewhere. For us these devices are now pretty commonplace and unspectacular.

Pompeii – the window to an ancient world

Sometimes, when you think back in time, a long, long way, it seems too distant. Too difficult to relate to. But when you stand in a building in Pompeii and look really closely at the expressions of the people displayed in the frescos, you realise that we’re pretty much the same as they were. You can see pretty much the exact same scene in the modern town of Pompeii a few minutes’ walk from the site.

As I walked back toward the exit of the site, the evening sun casting longer shadows of the desolated columns and walls, I felt a bit sad to be leaving the ruins of Pompeii. It’s not that we can’t sample history in the majority of the cities that we live, but Pompeii felt particularly special. The ancient world is so mysterious to us, and Pompeii acts as a little window to it. Illuminating it for us.

You can step up to that window, and take a glimpse through it. And, if you squint hard enough through the glass at the frescos and the mosaics beyond, you might just be able to make out those ancient people who came before us on the other side of the ruined wall.