Tour audio My Wonderful Tour of Pompeii

"Few disasters in the world have provided so much pleasure to later generations." With this phrase, Wolfgang Goethe began documenting his memorable trip to Pompeii in 1787 in his journal.

Thanks to the initiatives of the Bourbon family, when Goethe visited they had already been carrying out systematic excavations for about 30 years on the cities that had been buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79 AD. Before then for almost seventeen centuries, a ten-meter-high layer of lapilli and solidified mud had hidden Pompeii, Ercolano, and the other cities that had been affected by the eruption. The uncovering of these centers has brought an awesome series of discoveries to light, and the excavations are still ongoing today. The archaeological discoveries have revealed virtually every detail and every moment of existence of the daily life of well-to-do Roman towns of the first century AD.