Ancient Pompeii

Back in AD 79, Vesuvius was just a large hill to those who lived around the today's bay of Naples. Little did they realize that the immense cloud that cast over the eastern sky on a sunny August afternoon heralded the end of the prosperous Roman town, and the birth of splendor that its ruins are endowed with today. The excavations offer a glimpse into Roman life in the 1st century, frozen at the moment it was wrecked with pyroclastic flows and buried under layers of ash. The well-preserved forum, the baths, many houses, and some suburban villas gloriously testify to dramatic events that claimed as many as 2,000 lives and went down in history as the most devastating volcanic eruption ever.