Royal hideaway in Portici, near Naples
It was a warm day and we were on an old road in a corner of what used to be a royal park. It is now university grounds but still has that swish of palaces, intrigue and celebrity at play.
In front of us a smallish red building curved its face to catch views of Vesuvius and the sea. This, we were told, was where the king entertained his mistresses. Instantly the Italian guide had our attention.
A papyrus scroll – not quite destroyed by Vesuvius
The photograph above is of a papyrus scroll from a private library buried by Vesuvius in AD 79.
There are hundreds of scrolls like it, all scarred keepers of ancient thought. So far it has taken almost two thousand years to unpick a fraction of their secrets.
The lone bright light in the left third of the picture is the Mt Vesuvius Observatory. It is minutes before the end of 2014.
It was cold and seconds off midnight. A sub-zero wind fleeced coats, squeezed eyeballs and jumped camera shots into shaky blurs. Plenty of reason to go indoors but none of us did.
The view from our hill of steeply barked pines was incredible. We could see right across the night to the lights on the opposite shore of this mythical bay.
We stamped frozen feet as we stood suspended between geography, history, and two calendar years – Vesuvius to our front, Roman remains beneath and behind us, and Naples about to mark the annual switch.
The Phraser 