Pompeii Archaeological Park

Pompeii Archaeological Park, in the Campania region of southern Italy, preserves an entire Roman city buried under several metres of volcanic ash and pumice when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. The Roman town, originally founded by the Oscans and later an Imperial-era municipium, was sealed so rapidly that streets, shops, houses, and even the voids left by victims survive in extraordinary detail. Excavations began systematically in 1748 under the Bourbon kings and continue today, making it one of the longest-running archaeological projects in the world. Visitors walk along the original basalt-paved roads grooved by cart wheels, past the Forum framed by the ruins of the Temple of Apollo and the Temple of Jupiter with Vesuvius behind it. The Villa of the Mysteries, on the city's edge, holds a celebrated cycle of large-scale frescoes depicting a Dionysiac initiation rite in vivid 'Pompeian red'. The House of the Faun, the House of the Vettii (reopened in 2023 after lengthy restoration), the Stabian Baths, the Large Theatre, the Amphitheatre, and the Lupanar brothel each illustrate a different facet of daily life. The Garden of the Fugitives displays plaster casts made by pouring plaster into the cavities left by decomposed bodies, a technique pioneered by Giuseppe Fiorelli in the 1860s. The site is presented largely in situ and chronologically through the layers of excavation, with the Great Pompeii Project (funded by the EU from 2012) stabilising structures and opening new insulae. Many of the finest movable artefacts and frescoes are now held at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, while reproductions and contextual signage remain on site. Covering roughly 44 hectares of which about two-thirds is excavated, the park rewards several hours of unhurried exploration and remains the single most complete surviving record of an ancient Roman urban environment.