If Italy isn’t included in your summer travel plans, I have a suggestion, and admission is free.

A highlight of our trip to Italy was touring the ruins of Pompeii. Although much of the city has been excavated, we had to use our imagination to recreate the world that the Vesuvius eruption destroyed.

Imagine stepping back in time before the volcano’s destruction—now you can, not to Pompeii but to a villa from its sister city of Herculaneum, which has been recreated to its pre-volcano magnificence at the Getty Villa Museum in Los Angeles.

The elegant villa modeled after an ancient Roman country house, the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, has over 44,000 Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities dating from 6,500 BC to 400 AD. You can stroll around the exquisite galleries and gardens and experience the opulence of the Roman culture with its statues, frescoes, mosaics, and other ancient art and antiquities.