To most of us, Mount Vesuvius is at once a beautiful postcard and a deadly killer. We can’t forget the magic of a Neapolitan landscape, with the city gently laying on the waters of its gulf and Mount Vesuvius, sometimes pictured with a thin pinnacle of smoke flowing out of its main crater, embracing everything like a burly, but loving father.

And then, there is Pompeii. The eruption of 79 AD obliterated four cities, Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, and Stabiae from the face of the Earth, under a cloud of ashes, stones, and scorching hot gases that reached a height of 21 miles. Some 2.000 people, at the very least, died. All we know about those days comes from the letters that Pliny the Younger wrote to Tacitus. His uncle, Pliny the Elder, famous author of the Naturalis Historia, had traveled to Stabiae during the eruption and perished while trying to save people.