Travel Journal

Somehow we had ended up in the cemetery. After the villa of mysteries, the dog mosaic and the brothel: the final thing on the map. Now it was dark, the tombstones loomed over our heads, and we couldn’t get out.

“Gates close at 7.30pm,” a sign had said in Italian, but the only Italian we knew was “ciao” (hello) and “ciao” (goodbye), so we hadn’t read that. As the sky turned to black, Pompeii, a skeletal city immortalised in ash, opened its burnt-out eyes, and we realised something: we were the only people still here.

We ran past the graves, along the bubbling stone of never-ending streets – which a few hours earlier had been drenched in the hot, dripping sun. The cold, quiet city glowed, blue-grey in the moonlight. Gone was the chitter-chatter of tourists and the pseudo-military guards keeping fascinating artefacts and tormented spirits behind locked doors. Now the real residents were in charge.

Face-after-face on the tombs – the carved alter egos of the dead, their unblinking eyes watching us stumble; finally able to make their presence felt after the souvenir hunters, ice-creams and selfie sticks had been spat out. As we sped past people’s former homes and possessions, down the now deserted paths of daily lives, under untrimmed trees and bushes, bats flew in front of our faces, swooping and screaming: “Go back”.

In the shadows, the map faded from sight. It had shown us what the guided tours hadn’t; that there were miles of streets no-one was looking at; whole houses and temples not seemed worthy of a pithy description; an amphitheatre too far away for most people to walk to. And then there was the cemetery.

Nobody comes to Pompeii to see an actual cemetery. The dead people they are interested in aren’t buried in the ground; they are covered in plaster, their faces curled into horrific grimaces, illuminated by camera flashes on their glass box prisons. Maybe one day you’ll go and stare at them. But perhaps afterwards you’ll visit the real Pompeii, like we did.

Eventually: a small metal turnstile. And a man. A man! Apologies. We didn’t realise the time… We didn’t know where to go. He shrugs: “This is Italy. You go where you like.” And so we go back to the train, tourists, tickets and timetables, but we can’t help feeling disappointed. Next time, we must try and stay longer. Next time, we must stay all night.