Nice set! I would love to go there.

Beautiful! I would love to visit too.

Katbird, not only does your page look great, I absolutely love these shots! I'm going to fave a couple. I'm a classical civ B.A., and visiting Pompeii and Herculaneum is like my fondest dream right now. Did you happen to see the Villa of the Mysteries?

Thanks, Caine & Dania.

@AngelKaida: You know, I went to Pompeii the day we arrived, and went to the villa. But we went without a tour guide or map, and I never saw the murals. I always meant to go back to the villa, but each time I visited the ruins, I was in a different part of the city.

There are so many interesting places to see, besides the two ruined cities. In modern Torre Annunziata, just outside of Naples, is the villa of Poppaea, who was Emperor Nero's wife. It, too, was destroyed in the eruption, and it is a fascinating site.

I wish this blog let me comment on the individual photos.

OK, the top three images are statues that were recovered from Herculaneum. The woman's bust was found in the villa of the Papyri and is titled "Sappho".

The second image is a pair of runners, also from the villa of the papyri. We saw copies of these two boys at Empress of Austria Elisabeth of Bavaria's palace in Corfu, Greece.

The third bust is from the same villa and is titled Dionysus-Plato.

The mosaic is a close-up of a pillar from one of the villas in Pompeii. I'd have to look up the specific one.

The next two photos were part of a special exhibit commemorating the anniversary of the excavation of Herculaneum. These were actual skeletons removed intact from the boathouses along the water.

The two teeth were excavated on the island of Capri.

The upper one is a molar from the Straight-tusked elephant that inhabited Europe during the mid to late Pleistocene.

The second molar belongs to a mammoth (M. chosaricus).

The final two pictures are of glass bottles from Pompeii. I thought it was striking to see the way they had melted.