Campania’s felicitous climate, fertile soil and natural harbours have attracted settlers since ancient times. Prosperity invariably ensued. The Greeks founded some of their earliest colonies here, among them Naples and Paestum, the site of the latter preserving three of the most complete Doric temples to be found anywhere.
Campania was one of the most favoured areas in the Roman Empire. To the riches generated by trade, agriculture and naval dockyards there were added the proceeds of leisure industries as it became a holiday destination for wealthy citizens from Rome. Some of the most desirable towns and private villas in the peninsula were built here.

However, the infamous eruption in ad 79 of Mount Vesuvius completely buried two busy and salubrious towns on the Bay of Naples, Pompeii and Herculaneum, one with volcanic ash and the other with mud.

Paradoxically, this sudden obliteration preserved the towns with a level of completeness which has no parallel with any other archaeological site in the world.
Excavation has revealed them almost in their entirety, providing a unique insight into everyday life in the Roman Empire. Even the smallest and most fragile objects of daily use have survived, along with wall paintings, floor mosaics, precious jewellery and household utensils. The immediacy and vividness with which the imagination is able to grasp a past civilization is startling and unique.

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