Located just outside of present-day Naples, Italy, Pompeii was a thriving ancient Roman city until the year 79 CE, when Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried the city under roughly 20 feet of volcanic ash.
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Vesuvius gets all the press, but there’s an even more dangerous magma monster lying in wait nearby: the Campi Flegrei supervolcano. More than half a million people live in its danger zone. This short documentary from the BBC details how geologists monitor Campania's volcanos, and explores the sublime beauty of living in their shadow.
From cavemen to marker-wielding children, humans have always wanted to leave their mark. Read some of the graffiti left by ancient Romans here. The cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum feature exquisite levels of preservation due to the nature of their demise. Viewers can see the surviving graffiti by clicking through the site's featured collections, which include topics such as poetry and love.
No doubt the most haunting remnants of Pompeii are the plaster casts. These artifacts capture in excruciating detail what the disaster’s victims looked like in their final moments, from their body positions to the expressions on their faces as they tried to hide or escape. Learn how the 19th-century archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli came up with this unusual method of preserving the remains, centuries after the bodies themselves had decomposed.
Far less well-known than Pompeii, but arguably even more archaeologically significant, is the nearby town of Herculaneum. It was buried under five times more ash than Pompeii, and was thus even more hermetically sealed. In this BBC documentary, a leading Herculaneum scholar explains how it changed much regarding what we thought we knew about the daily life of average Romans, from their diet to their social mobility.
Most of those who died at Pompeii asphyxiated or were crushed. However, researchers couldn’t pinpoint what killed the several hundred people whose remains were found huddled together in the boathouses of Herculaneum, 11 miles away. Using spectroscopic analysis of mysterious spots on those bones, they came up with a grisly new theory. Superheated gas literally boiled the blood in their veins.
For years, most of what we knew about what happened at Pompeii came from two letters written by Pliny the Younger to the Roman historian Tacitus. Pliny witnessed Vesuvius blowing its top from the nearby town of Misenum. He tells of how the earth shook and the sky turned black, and how the seawater got sucked away, leaving creatures stranded on the shore. He also gives a cinematically detailed description of how his uncle, Pliny the Elder, raced to Pompeii to help, and never made it home.
Excavations at Pompeii have yielded stunning artifacts—a wooden bed, the saddle of a thoroughbred horse, and intact frescoes, for example—but one of the most significant results of recent digs is the idea that we’ve had the date wrong for 300 years. This longread from Smithsonian explains why some think the disaster happened in October, not April, among many other notable findings to come out of the Great Pompeii Project, the EU’s $140 million restoration program.
They say history is written by the victors, and indeed we know much more about the lives of kings and nobles than of people who scraped by on society’s lowest rungs. Pompeii is the exception: its well-preserved graffiti and artifacts tell us the stories of history’s voiceless. In this longread for Aeon, historian Guy Middleton paints a picture of the brutal conditions endured by the enslaved women who worked in Pompeii's brothels.
Pompeii, a bustling Roman city near modern Naples, Italy, was frozen in time after Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, burying it under 20 feet of ash. Once a vibrant hub of trade and culture, it boasted opulent villas, bustling streets, and snack joints called thermopolia. Rediscovered in the 16th century and excavated starting in 1748, its remains revealed stunning frescoes, preserved household items, and eerie plaster casts of victims caught in their final moments. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Pompeii offers an unparalleled glimpse into Roman life, while nearby Mount Vesuvius continues to loom as an active threat.
In 79 CE, Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried Pompeii under roughly 20 feet of volcanic ash. This deadly eruption killed much of the city’s population, but archaeologists recently discovered evidence of survivors. In this podcast episode, classicist Steven Tuck challenges the popular belief of total annihilation and explains how people may have survived, and how they continued to live after the disaster.
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