Pompeii

• 1. Introduction

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  Pompeii was a city of 10,000 to 20,000 people, alive with bakeries, wine shops, public baths, and the ordinary arguments of everyday life. Then, in 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius buried it under as much as six metres of volcanic ash and pumice, and it stayed that way for nearly seventeen centuries. What makes this more than a story of destruction is what the ash preserved: wooden furniture, painted walls, the food left on counters, the bodies of people caught mid-motion. The questions this documentary will chase are not just about how Pompeii died, but about how it lived. How did a coastal trading city grow from five small Oscan villages into a Roman colony famous across the empire? What happened in the frantic hours of the eruption itself? And why, after all the centuries of excavation since the mid-18th century, are archaeologists still finding things that rewrite what we thought we knew?

• 2. From Oscan Villages to Roman Colony

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  The first stable settlements on the site date to the 8th century BC, when the Oscans founded five villages in the area. The name of the city may preserve a memory of those origins: the Oscan word for the number five, pompe, suggests either five hamlets or a founding family group, the gens Pompeia, according to Theodor Kraus.

  With Greek sailors arriving in Campania from around 740 BC, the settlement entered a wider Mediterranean world. The Doric Temple, built away from the centre in what would later become the Triangular Forum, survives from this period, as does the cult of Apollo, introduced by the Greeks at around the same time. Greek and Phoenician sailors used the location as a safe port near the mouth of the Sarno River.

  By the early 6th century BC, the scattered villages had merged into a single community, walled in tufa and positioned at the crossroads between Cumae, Nola, and Stabiae. That first wall was unusually large, enclosing far more land than the town then occupied, including farmland. Historians read this as a sign that the settlement was already wealthy and ambitious.

  The Etruscans arrived by 524 BC, drawn by the Sarno as a commercial corridor between the sea and the interior. Under their influence, a primitive forum and the Temple of Apollo were built; Etruscan objects, including fragments of bucchero pottery, were found at both sites by the archaeologist Maiuri. Houses with the Tuscan atrium appeared. By 474 BC, the Battle of Cumae ended Etruscan dominance and handed control to allied Greek forces.

  The Samnites, from the areas of Abruzzo and Molise, conquered the region around 424 BC and gradually imposed their own architectural stamp. When Rome began projecting power into Campania through the Samnite Wars from 343 BC, Pompeii drifted deeper into the Roman orbit. After 290 BC it was forced into the status of a Roman ally, keeping linguistic and administrative autonomy but bound to Rome's interests.

  That loyalty was tested in the Second Punic War, from 218 to 201 BC, when Hannibal's invasion threatened city after city. Pompeii stayed faithful to Rome while many southern cities switched sides. The reward was trade and prestige: a statue of Apollo erected in the Forum by Lucius Mummius, given in gratitude for Pompeian support during the sack of Corinth, marked the city's entry into Rome's imperial economy. With riches flowing in from eastern campaigns, the Forum, the Large Theatre, the Temple of Jupiter, the Basilica, and the Stabian Baths were all built or expanded.

  Then came the Social Wars. In 89 BC, Sulla besieged the city, directing artillery at the strategically vulnerable Porta Ercolano. The impact craters of thousands of ballista shots are still visible in the walls today. After the conquest of nearby Nola forced Pompeii to surrender, the city was refounded as a Roman colony, officially named Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum. Sulla's veterans received land; those who had opposed Rome were dispossessed. Latin became the dominant language, and old aristocratic families began Latinizing their names as a formal sign of assimilation.

• 3. A City at Its Height

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  From about 30 BC, under Augustus, Pompeii shared in the empire-wide surge in public construction. New buildings included the Eumachia Building, the Sanctuary of Augustus, and the Macellum. Around 20 BC, running water arrived via a spur from the Serino Aqueduct, built by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. That aqueduct fed more than 25 street fountains, the public baths, and private houses and businesses throughout the city.

  The city that grew around that infrastructure was dense with commerce. There were at least 31 bakeries, each with wood-burning ovens, millstones, and a sales counter. The largest was the Modestus bakery, also known as the House of the Oven. Nearly 100 thermopolia, the inns and snack-bars serving hot food and drinks, lined the streets. The thermopolium of Asellina had three sales counters, a lararium painted with Mercury and Bacchus, and 683 sesterces found among its furnishings. The external facade advertised jugs and funnels and an electoral inscription that may name Asellina herself as the owner.

  Wool processing was organized on an industrial scale: 13 workshops handled raw material, seven did the spinning, nine the dyeing, and 18 the washing. The Building of Eumachia served as the wool market and the seat of the fullers guild, named for the priestess who funded its construction. At the fullonica of Stephanus, a converted house, washing took place in large tanks using water, soda, and urine.

  Wine was a major export, with evidence of Pompeian wine reaching Rome. The agricultural writer Columella set a production quota of three cullei per jugerum for Roman vineyards, and the nutrient-rich volcanic soils near Pompeii regularly exceeded it. Barley, wheat, and millet were grown, along with olives and figs. Carbonised plant remains found in gardens at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and a Roman villa at Torre Annunziata show that walnuts, chestnuts, chickpeas, broad beans, peaches, dates, and garlic were all consumed.

  In AD 59, a serious riot between Pompeians and visitors from Nuceria broke out in the amphitheatre. The violence was serious enough to be recorded in a fresco. The Roman Senate responded by sending the Praetorian Guard to restore order and banning further events in the arena for ten years.

  In about 64 AD, Nero and his wife Poppaea visited the city and made gifts to the temple of Venus, the city's patron deity, probably when Nero performed in the theatre of Naples. By 79 AD the population had reached approximately 20,000, sustained by the region's agricultural fertility and its position as a waypoint for goods moving between the sea and Rome along the nearby Appian Way.

• 4. The Earthquake and the Years Before

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  On the 5th of February 62 AD, a severe earthquake struck the Bay of Naples, causing considerable damage to Pompeii. The writer Pliny the Younger noted that earth tremors were not considered alarming in Campania because they were frequent there. This one, however, was estimated to register between 5 and 6 on the Richter scale. The timing made the chaos worse: it was the anniversary of Augustus being named Pater Patriae, and a feast day for the city's guardian spirits, meaning sacrifices and crowds were in the streets when the shaking began. Oil lamps fell, fires started, and nearby Herculaneum and Nuceria were also damaged.

  What followed over the next seventeen years reveals how adaptable and prosperous Pompeii remained. Most rebuilding happened in the private sector, with damaged frescoes plastered over and replaced with newer ones. In the public sector, the earthquake was treated as an opportunity: the Central Baths, for instance, were designed and begun only after 62 AD, incorporating modern features such as wall-heating and window glass already fashionable in Rome. The baths took over an entire city block, demolishing houses to do so, something that may have been easier because the earthquake had already left some of them structurally compromised. The public buildings on the east side of the Forum were restored with marble veneers.

  For a long time, archaeologists believed some of the earthquake damage had still not been repaired when Vesuvius erupted. Current evidence suggests otherwise: missing forum statues and marble veneers were more likely removed by looters after the city's burial. The city was, in the final years, still building and still growing.

• 5. The Eruption

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  Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, and the eruption lasted two days. The first phase was a rain of pumice, known as lapilli, which fell for approximately 18 hours. That extended warning appears to have allowed most of the population to flee: only approximately 1,150 bodies have been found at the site. Many of those who escaped seem to have taken valuables with them; numerous skeletons were found with jewellery, coins, and silverware.

  At some point during the night or early the following morning, the eruption entered a second, far more lethal phase. Pyroclastic flows, consisting of dense, high-speed clouds of scorching ash, began moving out from the volcano. A multidisciplinary study published in 2010 found that exposure to flows of at least 250 degrees Celsius, at a distance of 10 km from the vent, was sufficient to cause instant death even for people sheltered inside buildings. The city and its people were buried under up to twelve separate layers of tephra. Archaeology conducted in 2023 also showed that some buildings collapsed during the eruption due to earthquakes, killing those inside.

  Pliny the Younger watched the eruption from Misenum, across the Bay of Naples, and wrote a detailed account, though he did so approximately 27 or 28 years after the event. His uncle, Pliny the Elder, who commanded the Imperial Navy fleet at Misenum, ordered his ships across the bay to help with evacuations. Pliny the Elder died during that rescue attempt. Volcanologists have named similar eruption types "Plinian" in his honour.

  The precise date of the eruption remained uncertain for a long time. One version of Pliny the Younger's letter suggests August; another gives a date in late November. A charcoal inscription discovered in 2018 includes the date of the 17th of October, and must have been written recently before the eruption, pushing the date later in the year. A collaborative study in 2022 determined the eruption occurred on the 24th or the 25th of October. Supporting evidence includes heavier clothing on some of the victims, fresh autumn fruits and vegetables in the shops, sealed wine fermentation jars, and chestnuts from Oplontis that would not have ripened before mid-September. One coin found in a buried woman's purse bore the emperor's 15th imperatorial acclamation, a title that could not have been minted before the second week of September.

• 6. Rediscovery and Excavation

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  In 1592, architect Domenico Fontana was digging an underground aqueduct to the mills of Torre Annunziata when his crew broke into ancient walls covered with paintings and inscriptions. He kept the finding secret. For nearly another century, the buried city continued to go largely unrecognised: in 1689, Francesco Picchetti saw a wall inscription mentioning a town councillor of Pompeii but assumed it referred to a villa of Pompey. Francesco Bianchini and Giuseppe Macrini eventually challenged that interpretation, with Macrini excavating some walls in 1693 and writing that Pompeii lay beneath the area known as La Civita.

  Herculaneum was rediscovered in 1738 by workers digging foundations for a summer palace for Charles of Bourbon, the King of Naples. The quality of those finds prompted the Spanish military engineer Roque Joaquin de Alcubierre to begin excavations at the Pompeii site in 1748. On the 20th of August 1763, an inscription containing the phrase Rei Publicae Pompeianorum confirmed the city's identity.

  Early excavations were chaotic and sometimes destructive. When the French occupied Naples from 1806 to 1815, they confiscated the land and employed up to 700 workers. They connected previously excavated areas, exposed parts of the Via dell'Abbondanza, and gave observers the first real impression of the city's scale. But money was often short, and progress was uneven. Notable finds from subsequent years included the houses of the Faun, of Menandro, of the Tragic Poet, and of the Surgeon.

  Giuseppe Fiorelli took charge in 1863 and transformed the field's methods. He noticed that voids in the ash layer corresponded to decomposed bodies, and he devised a technique of injecting plaster into those cavities to recreate the forms of victims in their final moments. That method is still used today, though clear resin has replaced plaster because it is more durable and preserves the bones for further analysis. Fiorelli also divided the city into nine numbered districts, called regiones, subdivided into blocks called insulae, with numbered entrances. He published the first periodical with excavation reports.

  In the 1920s, Amedeo Maiuri excavated for the first time beneath the levels of 79 AD to study the city's earlier history. Maiuri's last large-scale work came in the 1950s, but scientific documentation was poor and his reconstructions were difficult to distinguish from original ruins. A severe earthquake in 1980 caused further destruction. Since then, excavation has been largely restricted to targeted areas, with most resources directed toward conservation.

  In December 2018, harnessed horses were found in the Villa of the Mysteries. In November 2020, the remains of two men were uncovered in a two-metre layer of ash in Regio V; bone analysis suggested the younger one had done manual labour and was likely a slave. In December 2020, a thermopolium was fully excavated in Regio V, containing eight terracotta pots still holding remnants of meals including duck, goat, pig, fish, and snails, along with a decorated bronze drinking bowl, wine flasks, and ceramic cooking jars. In January 2021, a four-wheeled ceremonial chariot was uncovered in the portico of a villa in Civita Giuliana, later identified as a rare bridal carriage called a pilentum; it was restored and displayed at the Baths of Diocletian in 2023. In 2021, the tomb of Marcus Venerius Secundio, a freed slave who rose to custodianship of the Temple of Venus and organised Greek and Latin performances lasting four days, was found outside the Porta Sarno gate.

• 7. The Problem of Preservation

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  Objects buried under Pompeii were preserved for close to 2,000 years by the absence of air and moisture. The challenge began the moment excavators introduced both. Weathering, erosion, light, water damage, poorly executed reconstruction, tourism, vandalism, and theft have all degraded the site since it was uncovered. Only two-thirds of the city has been excavated, and much of what has been exposed is deteriorating faster than it can be stabilised.

  Allied bombing during World War II damaged or destroyed many buildings. The Schola Armatorum, known as the House of the Gladiators, collapsed in 2010 after heavy rainfall and inadequate drainage, triggering fierce public controversy over neglect. In 1996 the World Monuments Fund placed Pompeii on its World Monuments Watch, naming it as a site that desperately needed repair, and it appeared on the watch again in 1998 and 2000. Funding for conservation came from American Express and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

  In June 2013, UNESCO warned that if restoration work failed to deliver substantial progress within two years, Pompeii could be placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger. A five-year conservation project, the Grande Progetto Pompei, had begun in 2012 with European Union support, targeting buildings at the highest risk. In 2014, a new management plan was submitted to UNESCO to coordinate conservation and maintenance across the site.

  In 2020 many domus gardens, orchards, and vineyards were carefully recreated using depictions found in frescoes and archaeological evidence, including the House of Julia Felix, the House of the Golden Cupids, and the Garden of the Fugitives. By 2024, the site was limiting daily ticket sales to a maximum of 20,000 personalised tickets per day and introducing timed entry during peak summer months, steps intended to ease the pressure of roughly 2.5 million visitors per year.

  The Antiquarium of Pompeii, built by Fiorelli between 1873 and 1874, suffered bomb damage in 1943 and further damage in the 1980 earthquake. It was closed for 36 years before reopening in 2016 for temporary exhibitions, then reopened as a permanent venue on the 25th of January 2021, displaying victims' casts, daily-life artefacts, and the settlement history of the city.