In the Campania area of Italy, close to Naples, was the ancient city of Pompeii. It is currently known as the commune of Pompeii. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other villas in the vicinity were all buried under 13 to 20 feet of volcanic ash and pumice.
The excavated city, which was mostly intact beneath the ash, provided a rare glimpse into Roman life, frozen at the instant it was buried, albeit much of the intricate evidence of its residents' day-to-day activities was lost in the excavations. With a population of around 11,000 in AD 79, it was a prosperous town that had a number of exquisite public structures and opulent private homes that were the major draws for the first archaeologists. The ash included organic remnants, such as wooden artifacts and dead people. As they withered over time, gaps were left behind that archaeologists later discovered could be utilized as molds to create plaster castings of distinctive, sometimes gory, figures in their last moments of life. In contrast to the formal language used by the classical authors, the countless graffiti carved on the walls and inside of rooms provide a plethora of examples of the mostly extinct Vulgar Latin used at the period.
Major excavations were prohibited after several past excavations that had revealed the majority of the city but left it in disrepair and instead restricted them to certain, prioritized regions. These sparked fresh discoveries in some of the city's uncharted regions in 2018 as a result.
