Every design for Ercolano

Ercolano lies at the western foot of Mount Vesuvius, on the Gulf of Naples just south-east of Naples, with the volcano filling the view on one side and the sea on the other. For most of its history the town was called Resina, and it grew up on the very volcanic rock that buried ancient Herculaneum, the Roman resort that legend says Hercules himself founded.

It is hard to grow up here without the past underfoot. Corso Resina runs past the eighteenth-century villas of the Miglio d'oro, Villa Campolieto among them, and below the modern streets lie the excavations, where the Casa del Bicentenario and the Casa d'Argo were homes to real families before the eruption. The road to the crater starts in town, so the climb to the rim of Vesuvius is something people here do, not just something they see on postcards.

If Ercolano is where you come from, you know that home here has always meant living between a mountain and a bay. Wear the map for that view, and for the streets that were built on top of a buried city.