Two Hours in Pompeii, Then Pasta in a House in Scafati

Six hours, in two halves. You meet in front of a restaurant at Piazza Esedra by the Porta Marina entrance, where your guide holds a sign, and the entry ticket to the archaeological park is included.

The guided walk lasts two hours, in a group of no more than eighteen. Pompeii was buried under several metres of ash and pumice in 79 AD, and what makes it unlike other Roman sites is not the ruin but the ordinariness: bakeries with the millstones still standing, election slogans painted on house fronts, a fast-food counter with the jars set into the marble.

Then you leave the site and go to Scafati, a few kilometres east, into a house the hosts describe plainly as the one they grew up in rather than a demonstration kitchen. Mamma teaches the pasta by hand: the flour on the board, the well, the eggs, the point at which the dough stops taking flour, and the shaping, which is done with fingers and a knife and cannot really be written down.

You eat what you made at the family table, with water and wine included, and the recipes go home with you.

Up to fourteen guests, minimum two per booking, hosted in English. Suitable for all fitness levels, though Pompeii is uneven underfoot and mostly unshaded.