← Back to the mapThe Forum of Pompeii with Mount Vesuvius rising behind the ruined columns
Modern photograph of the Pompeii Forum with Mount Vesuvius behind it · Wikimedia Commons

Pompeii

Italia · Roman province·Italy·Founded 6th c. BCE (Oscan)
Buried by Vesuvius 38 years before this map's 117 CE snapshot. Shown here from its excavated ruins, not as a living city of the empire.

Buried 79 CE by Vesuvius. Frozen at that moment — houses, shops, graffiti and all.

An uninhabited, fully excavated UNESCO World Heritage site and one of Italy's most-visited attractions, still yielding new discoveries from the 79 CE eruption.

Excavation history

1748
Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre (for King Charles III of Naples) — Launched the first organized digging at Pompeii, though early work amounted to treasure hunting — valuable objects were removed and structures were often reburied.
1763
Excavation workers under royal Bourbon direction — An inscription reading 'Res Publica Pompeianorum' was uncovered, definitively identifying the buried city as Pompeii.
1860s-1875
Giuseppe Fiorelli — Introduced systematic recording (numbered regions, blocks and doorways) and invented the technique of pouring plaster into body-shaped voids in the ash to cast the eruption's victims.
1924-1961
Amedeo Maiuri — Directed the largest 20th-century campaign, clearing much of Regions I and II; the EU-funded Great Pompeii Project (2012-2022) later opened new digs in Regio V, uncovering the House of Orion's mosaic and a painted thermopolium.

Notable finds

Alexander Mosaic
Alexander Mosaic
Lifted from the House of the Faun in 1843, this floor mosaic packs roughly 1.5 million tiny tesserae into a single scene of Alexander the Great routing Darius III at the Battle of Issus.
Naples National Archaeological Museum
Dancing Faun
Excavators pulled this small bronze faun from a mansion's central pool in October 1830 and named the whole house after it — a copy still dances in its original spot at Pompeii today.
Naples National Archaeological Museum
Portrait of Terentius Neo and His Wife
Portrait of Terentius Neo and His Wife
This fresco shows a Pompeii baker gripping a papyrus scroll beside his wife holding a stylus and wax tablet, one of the very few individualized painted portraits to survive from the Roman world.
Naples National Archaeological Museum
House of the Menander Silver Treasure
Workers clearing the House of the Menander in December 1930 found 118 pieces of silver tableware packed into a wooden chest, along with a separate box of gold jewelry and coins.
Naples National Archaeological Museum
Bacchus and Vesuvius Fresco
Bacchus and Vesuvius Fresco
A lararium fresco from the House of the Centenary shows Bacchus dressed head to toe in grapes, pouring wine for a panther beside Mount Vesuvius as it looked before the eruption buried it.
Naples National Archaeological Museum
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