With an estimated 62.1m visitors per year, Italy ranks as the third most popular tourist destination in Europe. Fittingly, Rome is also the third most-visited city on the continent. Still, there’s plenty outside of the capital to discover. Italy is uniquely placed among its neighbors for its history, which extends thousands of years back from the modern day to the beginnings of the Roman Empire.

The city of Pompeii is where all this history reaches the surface.