At two in the morning, Becky Holmes ’15 straightens her aching back and shoulders, rounded for the past few hours over the too-low steel of her food prep table, and starts to dance. The lime walls and stainless steel racks of the borrowed commercial kitchen space in Raleigh are a silent and familiar audience: The dance major spends at least sixty hours each week in their company.

The only signs of the splendor that was Vulci, Italy, are the network of tombs, the abandoned foundation of a grand temple, and the ruins that now dot the fields of swaying grass.Students in classical studies professor Maurizio Forte’s archaeology courses don’t have to imagine what this once-great Etruscan city looked like at its peak in the sixth century BCE. They can walk right into it in virtual reality.