Pompeii, Italy

Nobody saw it coming. It happened so fast, there was not enough time to escape. When the mountain exploded, it shrank from a height of 3,000 m (10,000 ft) to 1,000 m (3,500 ft) in a matter of three days and two nights and blanketed Pompeii under 10 m (30 ft) of ash. Neither the city nor Mt. Vesuvius, which looms above Pompeii only 5 km (3 miles) away, have ever been the same since that day: 1:00 pm on August 24, 79 A.D. When Pompeii was first built, houses, temples and roads were constructed on hardened lava flows. Shouldn’t that have been the first clue?

At the time of the volcanic eruption, Pompeii was recovering from the previous natural disaster: a terrible earthquake that had destroyed much of the town in 62 A.D. Almost completely rebuilt, it was a thriving Roman city with a population of 15 thousand. The community had all of the characteristics you would expect from a town of that size: temples, a supermarket, theatres, traffic, poets, a middle class, stores, public baths, craftsmen, a town square, merchants, a sports field, politicians, sleazy taverns and villas of the wealthy. Oh yeah, and brothels - 25 of them.

Eyewitnesses of that fateful disaster reported total darkness with lightning, earthquakes and tidal waves. The ash mixed with rain, causing roofs and walls to collapse under the weight. Survivors, trying to escape to neighbouring towns, were overcome by poisonous gases and died.   The inferno continued for three days and when the catastrophe came to an end, there was only silence. The ash from Mt Vesuvius’ eruption had suffocated people and animals alike in Pompeii, “freezing” life in this city in an instant and preserving it for archeologists and scientists to analyze and interpret. Pompeii was lost, covered under a thick blanket of ash and forgotten for 1,600 years.

It was in 1748 that efforts were made in earnest to uncover this long lost town. In the beginning, excavations were crude. People were mostly interested in recovering sculptures and paintings etc. Once some of the items of artistic value had been removed, the ruins were covered up once again. Over time, excavation methods improved, interest in the relics of the past grew and the restoration of old ruins and temples was added to the agenda. One interesting technique archeologists used was the pouring of plaster into the cavities left behind by decomposing bodies. The facial expressions and body positions of the resulting “casts” are graphic as they tell the shocking story about the last agonizing seconds of people’s lives. To date, only 80% of the ancient town has been excavated, preserved and restored. The rest still waits to be re-discovered.

Modern Pompeii has 36,000 inhabitants. The city’s people, as their forefathers did 2,000 years ago, still live in the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius, the second most dangerous volcano in the world (after Mt Fuji in Japan). They know, in the event of another eruption, lava flowing from the top of Mt. Vesuvius will reach Pompeii in just 8 minutes.

No wonder the Italians build fast cars.