Pompeii & Royal Palace of Caserta Private Tour from Rome

CASERTA Here, a magical and exhilarating atmosphere is traced by itineraries that journey into the heart of the city, accompanied by art, history and nature, and savoring the traditional flavors and folkloric traditions. Caserta Province surprises for its parks, reserves and protected areas, where a peaceful and tranquil environment warmly welcomes the visitor. The Volturno River runs through the ample plain, with the Matese Mountain constituting the regional confine with Molise, and the extinct Roccamorfina Volcano that borders with Lazio. Orchards, vineyards and olive groves embellish the landscape of this beautiful land, the abundance of which the Romans appreciated, calling it Campania Felix (happy country). Fine-sand beaches, protected by green-pine forests and lapped by the blue of the Tyrrhenian Sea, make up the coastal landscape that overlooks the Gulf of Gaeta. History greets the visitor on every corner: Medieval villages, churches and cathedrals, architecture from the Roman era have all observed the passage of ancient civilizations. This terrain surprises for the creativity of its people, for its tumult of bright colors, dances and songs echoing from the piazzas of small towns in joyous and frequent celebration. A walk with the local people enhances the senses, providing the visitor with a precious legacy, composed of flavors and aromas that lift the spirit and soothe the heart. A mild climate, favored by the protection of the Campanian Apennine range to the east, and the sea to the west, makes the stay pleasurable all year round. POMPEII Pompeii (just 16 miles southeast of Naples) is the most-visited archaeological site in the world, due to its many and well-preserved ruins, left behind by a city buried in Vesuvius’s wake in the year 79 A.D. The ancient site was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997, an excellent repository of details on quotidian life during Antiquity. Although the Osci Tribe originally founded it, the Romans captured Pompeii during the Peninusla’s Social War, transforming it into a Roman Colony and naming it Cornelia Venera Pompeiana. Partly-destroyed by an earthquake in 62 A.D., the entire city and its splendid suburban villas did not last long enough to see complete reconstruction: Vesuvius not only erupted, but spewed enough lava so as to instantaneously cover the city – which also meant that its buildings (down to the decorations and ornamentation) and its people were immediately fossilized as if they had been placed in a sort of time capsule, remaining in large part intact. The eventually-recovered bodies, particularly those belonging to “Julius Polybius’s family,” included Polybius himself (this Polybius being a laundry service owner) and a woman fleeing the volcano’s approaching aftermath with her jewelry in tow. These personages ended up serving as their excavators’ key to reconstructing the Pompeiians’ last moments of life. Amazingly, the inhabitants did not have a clue that they were living in the shadow of a volcano that had been sleeping for over 1,500 years; it is no wonder that they were not able to get away in time (neither did Pliny the Elder, Admiral of the Roman Fleet, while attempting to save them). Pompeii was essentially forgotten for centuries, until the first archaeological explorations in the 18th Century. Pompeii was a thriving Mediterranean port and a resort enclave for wealthy Romans; if it had not been for the remarkable state in which nature happened to maintain its remains, it might not have come to occupy the place in our imaginations that it does today. We know it for its civic buildings that line its wide streets, and for its domestic ones like the Surgeon’s House, the House of the Faun, the House of the Chaste Lovers and the equally-famous Villa of Mysteries (so-named for the interior murals depicting the initiation rites of the Cult of Dionysus). Characteristic graffiti defines the exteriors of many of the buildings here, while refined frescoes narrating daily life are standard interior decor in many of Pompeii’s homes. From them the city’s principal archaeologists have inferred a sense of glamour, luxury, and the appreciation for beauty and art possessed by the ancient Romans that resided here.