Welcome to Pompeii

On the morning of August 24, 79 AD — or possibly October 24, based on newer evidence — the residents of Pompeii woke up to a normal Roman day. Bakers pulled bread from ovens. Street vendors filled their thermopolia (fast-food counters) with hot soup. Children played in the street. Gladiators trained in the palaestra. By nightfall, the city no longer existed.

Mount Vesuvius, which most Pompeians didn't even recognise as a volcano — it had been dormant for centuries — erupted in one of the most violent volcanic events in recorded history. Within hours, a six-meter-thick blanket of ash and pumice had sealed the city into a perfect time capsule, preserving not just buildings and objects, but the postures, expressions, and final moments of some 2,000 people who never escaped.

For nearly 1,700 years, Pompeii lay hidden and forgotten. Then, in 1748, systematic excavations began. What archaeologists found astonished the world: a complete Roman city, frozen at the exact moment of its death. Streets with wheel ruts worn into the stone. Election campaign slogans painted on walls. A bakery with 81 carbonised loaves still in the oven. Graffiti about love, politics, and terrible neighbours. A dog curled up in agony. And thousands of voids in the ash — the silhouettes of people and animals who had simply... vanished — until Giuseppe Fiorelli's revolutionary plaster-casting technique in 1863 revealed them in heartbreaking detail.

Over the next eight stops, you will walk through the ancient city as it was in the last moments before the world went dark. Every stone you see, every fresco, every piece of graffiti is real — and nearly 2,000 years old.