Pompei Ruins

This place is HUGE. If you even get to Rome, schedule a day here. We took a Eurostar to Naples, took about an hour - then another 30 minutes or so on the Circumvesuviana train. Very very easy. The ruins are awesome, extensive, well preserved. The audioguide is good, inexpensive, but a little dull. You can do almost as well with the free map and guidebooklet. Rick Steve's also has a decent podcast that takes you through. This is the forum, with Vesuvius in the background. If you follow the sides up and complete the triangle, you can get an idea of what it looked like before it blew up 2000 years ago.

The ruts in the road here are from the carts 2000 years ago:

Here are some gladiators fallen on the field of combat in the amphitheater: