The story of this place
On 24 August (or October) AD 79, Vesuvius erupted with a force that buried Pompeii under six metres of pumice and ash within about 18 hours. Pyroglastic surges killed the roughly 2,000 residents who had stayed, sealing the city of 11,000 in a time capsule. Eighteenth-century excavations revealed bakeries with loaves still in ovens, election slogans on walls, frescoes, brothels, and the plaster casts of victims caught in their final poses—achieved by pouring plaster into voids left by decayed bodies. The eyewitness Pliny the Younger described the disaster in letters that gave us the term 'Plinian eruption.' Pompeii remains the most complete portrait of Roman daily life ever uncovered.