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World-famous, the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum are the only archaeological sites capable of restoring to visitors a Roman town whose life has stood still since the eruption of Vesuvius one distant morning in 79 AD.
The cities owe their exceptional state of preservation to the manner in which they were buried. Tons of ash, pumice and lapilli covered them under a layer of more than 20 feet while preserving them from most of the ravages of time. The same materials, cementing around the invested bodies, preserved their imprint, allowing archaeologists to return them to us in the attitudes they assumed following brief but excruciating agonies.
