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When the Mediterranean makes its first appearance, it’s through chilly sheets of rain. I spot the not-very-blue waters between the buildings of Marseille as my train from Paris pulls in. By the time we reach Nice the skies are still grey and I’m starting to wonder how far south I’ll have to go before I get some late-in-the-year sun. Of course, I’m not the first Briton to flee damp, cold drizzle.
Back in the autumn of 1820 a sickly John Keats took the same decision. In his case, however, the situation was more critical. His heartfelt line in Ode to a Nightingale, “O for a beaker full of the warm South”, written the previous year, had an edge of desperation. My own goal is Pompeii. That should be far enough, I reckon, to guarantee a warm sun. Not only that, but I have been drawn by recent stories of new discoveries at the ancient site. How much, I wonder, is that stalwart of the tourist circuit changing? An out-of-season visit seems like a good opportunity to see one of the world’s tourist honey pots without the crowds, and feel the sun on my face.
Next morning, when I change trains at Genoa, the sun finally comes out. I’m wishing I had planned a few stopovers in all the eye-catching places that I’m speeding through: La Spezia (Cinque Terre villages), Pisa (the leaning tower is an easy walk from the station), and Tarquinia, with its Unesco world heritage status Etruscan tombs. When did air travel throw up such possibilities? When did you last hear someone say: “Isn’t Terminal 3 divine at this time of year. Let’s linger”? Surveys of travel trends, such as Vrbo’s Unpack 25, point to an increasing demand for slow travel – the type railways offer, with opportunities for diversion and digression. If the noughties had Fomo (fear of missing out), with all the hurry, anxiety and herd mentality that implied, then the mood now is Jomo, the joy of missing out. No rush. No crowds.
As the train curls through Rome’s outer suburbs, there is a definite feeling that I’ve reached a warmer climate zone. I stay near Vatican City, and walk everywhere, including to the Spanish Steps where Keats took lodgings that he was destined never to leave. He had made it to the warm south, but too late. The bedroom is still there, unchanged except that when you look out of his window you see TikTok influencers doing silly dances on the steps.
I take the train south to Naples on a Saturday, where I arrive in time to watch Napoli play Juventus on TV amid much excitement while eating pizza at a street cafe. On Sunday it seems half the city’s inhabitants troop down to the port and head to the nearby islands, and I go too, hopping on a ferry to Procida (Ischia and Capri are other day-trip options). Procida is very much a living island, not some tourist-powered gentrification experiment.
The locals drive as hard and fast as Neapolitans, many heading for the waterfront restaurants where they tuck into seafood dishes, among them spaghetti al pesto di limone (the island’s large sweet lemons are famous and appear in lots of dishes). The beaches have become equally famous through the films Il Postino and The Talented Mr Ripley, but they are not so special. It’s the food, labyrinthine back streets and tumbles of colourful houses that count, many still occupied by fishers’ families rather than Airbnb customers.
When Keats came to Italy, Pompeii was a newly rediscovered site and archaeology had barely risen above the level of treasure-hunting. Tunnels were dug into the pumice and ash layers to retrieve valuables and cart them 15 miles back to Naples. Some excavations undoubtedly destroyed more than they found. The 20th century saw the site become a major tourist attraction and there was a sense of stasis: the story of Pompeii had been worked out and catalogued. The tourist circuit was soon equally well established: you caught the Circumvesuviana train from Napoli Centrale to Pompei Scavi. You took a guide. Someone in the group would ask to see the brothel; another would demand to see the bodies. You would do the House of the Faun, the Tragic Poet, and three or four more, then someone would sing in the theatre and everyone would ignore the old chap reminiscing about Pink Floyd playing the amphitheatre in 1972.
But something has changed. The current director, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, has shaken up the status quo. There have been new discoveries. I meet Alessandro Russo, one of the archaeologists. “It’s a very exciting time to work here,” he tells me. “We have the artefacts from old excavations, but now we are digging new areas and getting the untouched context. That is helping us reinterpret the areas previously excavated.”
Alessandro takes me into zone “Regio IX”, where the team are shovelling pumice out of rooms before the more delicate work of uncovering the spectacular wall-paintings, the colours apparently as vivid as in AD79. A gantry overhead means that visitors can watch this happening. Alessandro points to a portrait of a young girl. “It’s an unusual painting, possibly of a real child.” She gazes back at me, chubby arms full of fresh grapes, figs and pomegranates. Next to her is a hole in the wall, the place where an 18th-century explorer had smashed a tunnel through the tons of pumice and rubble, narrowly missing the unnoticed precious portrait.
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Further inside the building, behind a plastic sheet, are the remains of a stable, the skeletons of six horses in the positions that they died. “This will probably be on show by the end of the year,” says Alessandro. He leads me up on to the top layer of ash that still covers one-third of Pompeii. This is what hid the town for about 1,700 years, a greyish-white landscape dotted with scrub and trees.
Down a ramp, however, we enter a newly uncovered house. “It’s a bakery,” says Alessandro, pointing out the oven and even a wall painting of what looks vaguely like a pizza. “They were actually doing construction work when Vesuvius erupted.” Here there are still fallen roof timbers and piles of volcanic dust hiding, no doubt, further treasures, but around the corner is an exquisite blue room and a huge black-painted dining chamber.
The sensation of being there at the moment of discovery is not entirely left to the archaeologists. One of Pompeii’s best new developments is to allow visitors to sign up for a tour of the current archaeological work. At the moment it’s the only way to view new treasures like that blue sacrarium.
One other great treasure that should soon be back on view is the Alexander the Great mosaic. This four-million-tile depiction of Alexander’s battle with the Persian king Darius III was found in the House of the Faun in 1831 and taken to Naples. Dated to around 100BC, it is now undergoing vital preservation work, but should be back on view in Naples’s National Archaeological Museum next year.
Pompeii dominates the Neapolitan tourist scene so completely that it’s easy to forget there are other sites worth visiting. Conveniently for me, still hungry for hotter sunshine, one of the best is an hour by direct train further south. Repeated recommendations from travellers had convinced me to go to Paestum.
From the moment I step off the train, I’m glad I listened. Paestum was founded by the Greeks in about 600BC and has three spectacular temples among other buildings. In the museum the real gem is the Tomb of the Diver: five painted panels from a tomb found outside the city in 1968, one of which depicts a youth diving from a great height into a river or the sea. Nothing similar has yet been found and archaeologists are not even sure which culture produced this masterpiece. Some regard it as a symbol of the dive into the unknown that death represents; others believe it may be a yet more complex allegory. But I know exactly what it means: it means the water wasn’t too cold. And there is a sandy beach less than a mile away. I set off on the last leg of my journey to the sun.
The trip was provided by Byway, which creates European rail trips. A 10-day journey to Italy starts at about £994pp. In Rome accommodation was provided by Vrbo (apartments from £145 a night) and the Cardo Roma hotel (doubles from £130). Pompeii admission is £18. Get admission to many museums (including Pompeii), and travel to and from Naples, with the Campania Artecard 365, from £35. Further information from the Italian tourist board
