Pompeii

Pompeii is in Italy, near a big mountain called Vesuvius.

Long ago, it was a busy town. People lived in houses and shopped in the streets. Then the mountain covered the town with ash. Now people dig it up, and you can walk where Romans walked.

Pompeii was a Roman town in the south of Italy, not far from the city of Naples. It stood on a low hill made of old lava, close to the volcano Vesuvius.

In 79 CE, Vesuvius erupted. Ash and small stones called lapilli fell on the town and buried it. Its streets, shops and houses stayed buried until digging began in 1748, more than 1,600 years later. Today about two-thirds of the old town has been dug out, and it is an open-air place to explore. In 2025, 4,000,090 people visited it.

Pompeii stands on a plateau about 30 m above sea level, formed by a flow of Vesuvian lava, above the valley of the River Sarno, at whose mouth the town had a busy port. In 79 CE the eruption of Vesuvius buried it, as UNESCO puts it, largely under a thick layer of ash and lapilli.

The park's 2015 guide gives the ancient town 66 hectares, and UNESCO gives an excavated area of 44 ha, about two-thirds of it. With the town of Herculaneum and the villas of Torre Annunziata, it was inscribed by UNESCO in 1997 as the Archaeological Areas of Pompei, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata. UNESCO's statement describes Pompeii as the only archaeological site in the world that provides a complete picture of an ancient Roman city. The Archaeological Park of Pompeii counted 4,000,090 visitors to the Pompeii site in 2025, and 4,118,926 across all its sites.

Pompeii has long stone streets.

There are bakeries with big stones for making flour. There are little shops that sold hot food. There is a huge oval arena where crowds watched shows.

At the center of Pompeii was the Forum, a big square where people met, shopped and ran the town. Nearby stood the Basilica, a hall for business and law courts.

Around the town, people have found 89 small shops called thermopolia that sold hot food. Many craftspeople and traders lived with their families above their one-room shops, in homes that rarely had a kitchen, so they ate out. Bakeries ground wheat with big millstones made of lava. An aqueduct brought water to a water tower at the town's highest point, and 40 fountains stood in the streets around the town. At the edge of town is the amphitheater, an oval arena built in 70 BCE for up to 20,000 people.

The Forum was the center of administration, justice, trade and worship; the main temple on its axis lines up with Vesuvius. The Basilica (about 130 to 120 BCE, 1,500 m²) housed business and the courts, and is among the oldest of its type in the Roman world. The Stabian Baths, of the 2nd century BCE, had cold, warm and hot rooms heated by air from furnaces passing through hollow walls and floors.

The excavated two-thirds of the town holds 89 thermopolia, cook-shops used by the lower classes, among them craftsmen and traders who often lived with their families above one-room shops, in homes that rarely had a kitchen. In the bakery of Popidius Priscus, five lava mills (a fixed cone, the meta, under a turning hourglass, the catillus) were turned by enslaved people or animals. The Castellum Aquae, at the highest point (42 m), distributed water from the Augustan Serino aqueduct through three pipes; damaged in 62 CE, it seems to have been out of use by 79 CE, unlike the 40 street fountains. The amphitheater, built in 70 BCE for up to 20,000 spectators, is, in the park's 2015 guide, the oldest known in the Roman world. UNESCO also notes the town's wealth of graffiti, including election slogans: an election was coming when Vesuvius erupted.

People began to dig up Pompeii long ago.

They are still digging and finding new things. Today, millions of visitors come to walk its streets.

Digging at Pompeii began in 1748, under the King of Naples, Charles of Bourbon. In 1858 the archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli divided the town into numbered regions and blocks. When no one knew who had owned a house, the diggers named it after something they found there.

Archaeologists are still digging, and the park works to repair old walls and paintings and protect them from the weather. Pompeii is so popular that in 2024 the park set a limit of 20,000 visitors a day. In 2025, 4,000,090 people visited.

The town was rediscovered at the end of the 16th century, but excavation began only in 1748 under Charles III of Bourbon, King of Naples, and continued through the 19th century. In 1858 Giuseppe Fiorelli divided the city into regiones and insulae; houses whose owners were unknown were named by the excavators after their finds. The park says the remains of over 1,000 victims of the eruption have been found. Where hardened layers of ash kept the shape of a body after it decayed, a method perfected by Fiorelli has made a little over a hundred casts since 1863.

Conservation is constant. The Great Pompeii Project, approved by the EU in 2012 with 105 million euros of EU and Italian funds, set out to secure unexcavated embankments and buildings and to restore masonry and wall paintings by December 2015. After a summer of record crowds, the park introduced named tickets and a limit of 20,000 admissions a day on November 15, 2024. Its figures give 4,000,090 visitors to the Pompeii site in 2025, against 4,069,377 in 2024.