Pompeii
You can go to any museum to see history, but you can't really time-travel into a different life within four walls of a certain past. Being in Pompeii, you are directly immersesd into a lost culture.
On first glance, there are patterns of stone everywhere; the layout of the lost city, pillars that stand on their own, blank slates left astray and decorations on the walls of the important buildings. A labyrinth of clay and brick walls with a few sporadic remaining roofs accompanying them, you could easily get lost within the devastation. And when you get lost, unable to find your way back, you start a new life (or at least attempt to), like on a deserted island, right? Except here, you already have a structure built for you, but the most vegetation you have is a small amount of green foliage littered on the ground, enshrouded with copious amounts of rubble. You're surrounded by scorched red, brown, grey and beige, like in a desert, desolate and crying for help in such a merciless environment, being exposed to the elements above. Especially in the Forum, where you'll notice that the city centre has so much going on in such barren wasteland. Without all the other sightseers seeming to bring to life an invisible market, the ghost of each service or products that were made with adoration now merge with their ever-crumbling surroundings, helpless and trapped.
Moving past the slums of the slaves, the rowdy bars and the Forum, you will come across elite houses and work spaces. It's as if the instruments are still being played, medicines researched and literature being written but nothing is coming of this labour any longer. The mystery. The potential futures. The studies. The unique entertainment industry. Could they have advanced further than modern civilisations? Could they have remained recluse and guarded? I think back to certain families not only in Pompeii but also Herculaneum, Naples, that refused to evacuate out of their precious city. They were incredibly devoted to their motherland; they stood their ground and stared the volcanic titan in the face as it came down on them with a thousand-degree blow.
But even though they lie as skeletons, Vesuvius the villain couldn't erase their legacy; not the structure of the town, not the mummified bodies of these families – not even the bread they baked or the almonds they harvested. The might of the patriot is engrained in the atmosphere, the soil, and could not leave even if it wanted to. This love is wilfully stuck.
And now they wander around in this half-town, like stock-motion picture of a place half-built, except it's in the opposite direction of construction; geological destruction frozen in time. Demolition by melting… And with such a blistering heat from above, you'd think that would be what Pompeii was at the mercy of. And then it suddenly becomes probable that Vesuvius could have been provoked in competition by it's competition, the villain of the sky, the sun… and, against its own will, it finally blew, endangering the wide-eyed city, wrapped in the tethers of jealousy.