Today I went to two ancient Roman villas that were destroyed by Vesuvius in the eruption of 79 CE, just like Pompeii and Herculaneum. The Villa Poppaea is in Oplontis (sometimes it’s just called the Villa Oplontis). Later in the day, I visited the Villa Arianna at Stabia, which even today has a million dollar view of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples. It must have been stunning in antiquity. The Oplontis site was fantastic, with many frescoes still in situ. I took this detail, of a small bird flying in a garden. It struck me as marvelous that I was looking at it 2000 years after it was painted, and was able to take a picture of it and share it with the world on my blog. I think the painter would have liked that. He captured a beautiful animal flying through space, a brief instant in time, held for all time in mid-flight. Even the destruction of the volcano could not destroy it. These are treasures.