Pompeii: How a Buried Roman City Came Back Out of the Ash of Vesuvius
In AD 79, Vesuvius buried Pompeii and Herculaneum under ash and pumice. Seventeen centuries later, royal diggers began tunnelling into them, and a 19th-century archaeologist found a way to give shape to the people who died there.
In the early 1590s, workmen digging a water channel across the plain below Vesuvius kept hitting walls. Some were painted. Some carried Latin inscriptions. The channel's builder, the architect Domenico Fontana, simply ran his tunnel through them and moved on.
He had cut straight through a Roman city of about 11,000 people. Nobody would know its name for another 170 years.
A city that vanished in a day
Pompeii was a prosperous town near the Bay of Naples, with temples, bakeries, taverns, an amphitheatre and streets of painted houses. It had been shaken by a strong earthquake in AD 62 or 63, and some buildings were still under repair when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79.
The best account comes from Pliny the Younger, who watched from Misenum, across the bay, and wrote about it in two letters to the historian Tacitus some 25 years later. He described a huge cloud rising from the mountain in the shape of an umbrella pine. His uncle, Pliny the Elder, who commanded the Roman fleet there, sailed towards the coast to help and died on the shore at Stabiae.
For hours, pumice and ash rained on Pompeii, collapsing roofs. Many people fled. Those who stayed, or left too late, were caught the next morning by pyroclastic surges, fast-moving clouds of hot gas and ash that swept over the town. Pompeii ended up buried under several metres of material. Herculaneum, closer to the volcano on the coast, disappeared under about 20 metres.
When did it happen?
For centuries the date was given as 24 August, the day in the most widely copied text of Pliny's letter. Manuscripts disagree, though, and archaeologists kept finding things that looked out of season for August: pomegranates and other autumn fruit, braziers for heating, wine that seemed already sealed from the harvest.
In 2018, excavators in a house being renovated at the time of the eruption found a scrawled charcoal note dated to the 16th day before the Kalends of November, which is 17 October. Charcoal on a wall is fragile, so many scholars think it was written in October 79, a week or so before the eruption. Others argue that it could have survived for months, so it may date from October 78. Most specialists now lean towards an autumn eruption, but the question is still open.
Royal tunnels at Herculaneum
The rediscovery began at Herculaneum. In 1709, men digging a well at Resina struck finely cut marble. The Prince d'Elbeuf, a French-born nobleman serving with the Austrian army that then ruled Naples, bought the land and tunnelled out statues from what turned out to be the town's theatre, until he stopped for fear of collapse.
In 1738, Charles of Bourbon, King of Naples, began systematic digging there, supervised by the Spanish military engineer Rocco Gioacchino de Alcubierre. The work was done mostly through tunnels and shafts, hunting for sculpture and paintings for the royal collection. In the 1750s, workers at a great villa outside the town found hundreds of blackened, carbonised papyrus scrolls, the only library to survive from the classical world.
Finding Pompeii's name
In 1748, Alcubierre turned to the site that Fontana's channel had crossed. Pompeii was much easier to dig than Herculaneum, because the material over it was lighter and shallower. Even so, he at first believed it was another town, Stabiae.
The question was settled in 1763, when an inscription was found that mentioned the "res publica Pompeianorum", the community of the Pompeians. Excavation went on, slowly and unevenly, for the next century. Visitors on the European Grand Tour came to walk the newly cleared streets, and finds were carried off to the royal museum in Naples.
Fiorelli's plaster casts
The man who turned the dig into modern archaeology was Giuseppe Fiorelli, who led the excavations in the 1860s and 1870s. He divided the city into nine regions, numbered every block and doorway, and insisted on recording what was found where. That address system is still used today.
He is best remembered for the casts. Workers had long noticed hollow spaces in the hardened ash, sometimes with bones at the bottom. These were the moulds left by bodies that had decayed after burial. In early February 1863, in a lane later called the Vicolo degli Scheletri, Fiorelli's team poured liquid plaster into such hollows, waited for it to set and chipped away the ash. Out came four people, in the positions in which they died.
About a hundred casts of people have been made since. Many still contain the victims' skeletons and objects they were carrying, which is why scientists can now study them with X-rays, CT scans and DNA.
What the dead have told us
The casts made the disaster personal, and for 150 years guides told stories about them: a mother holding her child, two sisters embracing, a family who died together. In 2024, a team publishing in Current Biology analysed DNA from several casts. The "mother" turned out to be a man unrelated to the child, at least one of the "sisters" was male, and a group thought to be a family were not related to one another.
The same work showed that Pompeii's people had varied ancestry, much of it from the eastern Mediterranean, a reminder of how connected the Roman world was.
Herculaneum gave its own surprise. Excavations at the old shoreline from 1980 found hundreds of skeletons huddled in stone boat sheds, people who had waited for rescue by sea. Studies suggest they were killed by extreme heat from the first surge, not by suffocation.
Legend and evidence
Pompeii is often called a city "frozen in time", which is close to the truth for one moment but not for its history. Parts of the town were dug into soon after the eruption by survivors and looters. Early excavators removed frescoes and statues and left other material to decay. Bombing in 1943 damaged parts of the site.
The popular image of victims "turned to stone" is also wrong. What visitors see are plaster casts, made in the 19th and 20th centuries from the empty shapes the bodies left behind.
Pompeii today
About two-thirds of the city, which covers roughly 66 hectares, has been excavated. The rest is being left for future archaeologists with better methods. In 1997, Pompeii, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata were inscribed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and millions of people visit every year.
New work continues, including recent excavations in Region V, where the charcoal inscription was found.
Fontana's tunnel is still down there, crossing the streets of a city its builder never knew he had found. It took kings, engineers and one methodical archaeologist to see what he walked past.
Legend or fact?
You may have heardPompeii was completely forgotten until the 1700s.
Partly trueThe city's exact site was lost, but its name survived in Roman texts, and an engineer's water channel cut right through it in the 1590s. Locals called the hill 'La Civita', the city. What was missing was anyone who recognised what lay underneath.
You may have heardThe Pompeii bodies are victims who were turned to stone.
Not quiteThe figures are plaster casts. Bodies decayed inside hardened ash, leaving hollows, and from 1863 excavators poured plaster into those hollows. Many casts still hold bones.
You may have heardVesuvius erupted on 24 August AD 79.
Partly trueThat date comes from the usual text of Pliny the Younger's letters. Autumn fruit, braziers and a charcoal inscription dated to mid-October suggest a later date, probably October. The question is still argued over.
You may have heardThe famous cast of a mother holding her child shows a mother and child.
Not quiteA DNA study published in 2024 found that the adult was a man who was not related to the child. Several other cast 'families' were also not what the stories said.
Timeline
- AD 62 or 63A strong earthquake damages Pompeii; repairs are still under way when Vesuvius erupts.
- AD 79Vesuvius erupts, burying Pompeii under pumice and ash and Herculaneum under much deeper volcanic flows.
- 1590sDomenico Fontana's underground water channel cuts through the buried city without it being identified.
- 1709Well diggers at Resina strike marble; the Prince d'Elbeuf tunnels into what proves to be Herculaneum's theatre.
- 1738Systematic digging at Herculaneum begins under Charles of Bourbon, King of Naples.
- 1748Rocco Gioacchino de Alcubierre starts excavating at Pompeii, at first believing it is another town.
- 1763An inscription naming the 'res publica Pompeianorum' confirms the site is Pompeii.
- February 1863Under Giuseppe Fiorelli, the first plaster casts of victims are made.
- 2018A charcoal inscription dated to mid-October revives the debate over the eruption date.
Questions people ask
Who discovered Pompeii?
No single person. An engineer, Domenico Fontana, tunnelled through it in the 1590s without realising. Formal digging began in 1748 under the Spanish-born engineer Rocco Gioacchino de Alcubierre, working for the King of Naples, and the site was confirmed as Pompeii by an inscription in 1763.
When did Vesuvius destroy Pompeii?
In AD 79. The traditional date is 24 August, from Pliny the Younger's letters, but a growing body of evidence, including a charcoal inscription dated to 17 October, points to an eruption in the autumn, probably late October.
How were the Pompeii plaster casts made?
Bodies buried in fine volcanic ash decayed over time, leaving hollow spaces in the hardened ash. From 1863, excavators led by Giuseppe Fiorelli poured liquid plaster into these hollows, let it set and then dug away the ash.
How many people died at Pompeii?
The total is unknown. About 1,150 sets of remains have been found at Pompeii, and about a third of the city is still unexcavated. Most residents probably fled during the first hours of the eruption.
Is Herculaneum different from Pompeii?
Yes. Herculaneum was a smaller, wealthier town on the coast. It was buried by about 20 metres of hot volcanic material, which preserved wood, food and even papyrus scrolls that do not survive at Pompeii.
Test yourself
0 of 5 answered
Sources
- Archaeological Areas of Pompei, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata , UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- Letters 6.16 and 6.20, to Tacitus , Pliny the Younger, early 2nd century AD
- Inside the casts of the Pompeian victims: results from the first season of the Pompeii Cast Project in 2015 , Papers of the British School at Rome (2020)
- Ancient DNA challenges prevailing interpretations of the Pompeii plaster casts , Pilli et al., Current Biology (2024); reported by NBC News
- The casts of Pompeii , Pompeionline.net
- Pompeii , Wikipedia, and the sources it cites
Photographs are credited in their captions and used under the licences shown. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it, as described in our editorial policy.
More in Ancient cities
Free weekly email
Liked this? Get one story like it every week
The newest story, a fact you have probably never heard, and our latest one-minute film. No spam, unsubscribe in one click.
