Channel your inner Indiana Jones at the interactive Museo Archeologico Virtuale, which opened last summer just south of Naples. Instead of encased artifacts, MAV has 70-plus multimedia installations that recreate nearby Pompeii and Herculaneum in their heyday, before Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D.

You do the discovering here: Your footsteps scatter virtual dust along the floor to expose intricate mosaics from Pompeii's House of the Faun, and your fingertips wipe away a misted glass to reveal a woman bathing after a visit to the caldarium.

The walls of a central room, CAVE, surround you with projections of a Roman home, from the kitchens to the gardens, as if you're a guest. Dangling in the air of another room are holograms of lavish jewels that villa owners had grabbed when fleeing the eruption. (The actual jewels, now in a Naples museum, were found on the beach of Herculaneum.)

Voices of such ancient inhabitants greet you with their stories, and the museum experience ends with a giant projection of Pompeii's Forum that gradually shifts from day to night, pre- and post-eruption.

"Kids have come back here three or four times," museum director Walter Ferrara told me. "It's more fun than seeing the excavations." Via IV Novembre 44, Ercolano, $9, open daily 9 a.m.-5 p.m.