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Through much of the first two weeks of August in AD79, residents of the Roman town of Pompeii were increasingly woken in the night by rumblings emanating from a nearby mountain. The air became thick with floating ash, which people dealt with as best they could by clearing it off roadways and digging it into the soil of their gardens. Some in the government felt an evacuation plan should be formulated, but Mt Vesuvius had long been known as an active volcano, and most who lived in its shadow felt confident of being able to flee if things did get worse. Then on August 24, the mountain suddenly blew its top, releasing a monstrous river of molten lava that swallowed the city, sealing it off from the rest of the world for the next sixteen hundred years.

The spectre of the events of that day is evident from the moment you enter the excavation site at Pompeii, and not just because Mt Vesuvius looms close by. The city is so well preserved that the hum of a normal day’s activity seems to echo in the stone streets as you wander among its houses, temples, public buildings and amphitheatres. Estimates of both the population at the time (10,000-20,000) and the number of people killed (2000-3500) vary, but it’s generally agreed that a fifth of Pompeii’s inhabitants lost their lives that day. Human tragedy notwithstanding, archaeologists and historians have been left with a perfectly preserved city, from the days when the Roman Empire was at its zenith.

Most visitors to Pompeii spend just one day touring the site – less than the time required to see everything in what by modern standards is still a large town. After thumbing through a booklet describing some of the site’s more distinctive buildings, I settled on an itinerary that would take in those with the most intriguing names. First stop was the House of the Wild Boar, complete with a lurid hunting scene that features a pair of ferocious-looking pigs. The nearby Villa of Mysteries was named for a mural depicting a woman’s “mystery initiation” into marriage, but the house is thought to have been a weekend home for an upper-class family as its Greek-style interior was all the rage with the moneyed classes at the time.

The House of the Dioscuri made my list purely on the basis of the booklet description: “This is one of the most sumptuous and largest houses from the latter period of Pompeii” – which goes to show you can be struck by an urge to see how the other half lives even when they’ve been dead for nearly two thousand years. The house’s open-plan Corinthian atrium, complete with twelve splendid columns, still reeks of gracious living and with the addition of a roof and some updated plumbing would make a fine summer retreat for any Italian movie mogul. In the same high-rent neighbourhood is the House of the Surgeon, but here your imagination has to do most of the work as its bizarre cache of bronze surgical probes, catheters and gynaecological forceps was long ago removed to the National Museum of Archaeology in Naples (a must-see after you’ve done the rounds of Pompeii).

The most visited private dwelling of all however, is the one that bears the most romantically evocative name: the House of the Tragic Poet. A painting found here showed a choir of satyrs enacting a “tragic” theatre scene, but what really pulls the crowds is an extraordinary floor mosaic of a chained dog, complete with the warning “CAVE CANEM” (Beware of the Dog). Few mosaics left at the site are in such good condition, with the best of these also on display at the museum in Naples.

Like any Roman town worth its salt, Pompeii also had plenty of public spaces for sporting and theatrical performances, the most popular of which were the ferocious gladiator battles. These were held in Pompeii’s 20,000-seat amphitheatre; built around 70 BC, this is one of the world’s oldest and best preserved amphitheatres and still looks an ideal venue today for a sports event or rock concert.

So much of Pompeii is in similarly pristine condition that the devastation wrought here can seem less than real – until you wander into a tiny, tranquil vineyard known as the Garden of the Fugitives. At the rear of the vineyard is a glass case containing seven prostrate figures, positioned much as they were when found by excavators. Each one is a plaster cast made from the cavity left by a decomposed body.

It was while in the silent company of the fugitives that I began puzzling over how so many people could have been swallowed by lava that came from a volcano more than five miles away. The notion that thousands of Pompeians had simply failed to out-run a river of molten rock seemed barely credible; and as it turns out, vulcanologists have a very different theory about their fate.

Besides disgorging lava and ash, volcanoes produce something called a pyroclastic flow – an airborne mixture of hot gasses, volcanic crystals and pumice capable of travelling at 100 miles per hour. Anyone who stayed behind to take their chances would have been overwhelmed by toxic gas and then buried under tons of debris long before the lava entombed them in their homes.

It’s hardly surprising that Mt Vesuvius is still closely monitored and ancient records studied for information about its behaviour. The volcano is known to have erupted regularly every century or so until about 1037, after which it remained quiet until 1631, when a sudden and massive explosion rocked the Bay of Naples and killed four thousand people. The last major eruption occurred in March 1944, but recent studies suggest that Vesuvius is not done with yet. A two hundred square-mile magma lake has been discovered beneath the mountain – a reservoir far larger than anyone imagined might exist. Of course, with the all latest high-tech seismic gadgetry, there should be ample warning before the next eruption turns the underground lake into a deadly aboveground river. But on a visit to Pompeii, I’d keep one eye on the mountain, just in case.

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