48 Fun Facts About Pompeii

Which volcano buried Pompeii in 79 AD?

Vesuvius is still active, and because about 3 million people live near enough to be affected, it ranks among the world's most dangerous volcanoes.

Pompeii lies near which modern Italian city?

Naples is home to the museum that long kept the erotic finds from Pompeii in a locked secret room, shown only to people of mature age and sound morals, and opened it to all in 2000.

Roughly how deep was the layer of ash and pumice that buried Pompeii?

About 6 metres of ash and pumice sealed the town, and that sudden burial protected it from looting and the weather for centuries.

What were the raised stone blocks in the middle of Pompeii's streets for?

Crossing without getting wet mattered on streets that doubled as drains, and the scrapes cart wheels left on these stones have let archaeologists work out which streets ran one way.

Which Roman general besieged Pompeii in 89 BC after the town joined a revolt against Rome?

Sulla then made the town a Roman colony and settled thousands of his veterans on land in and around it.

What happened in Pompeii's amphitheatre in AD 59?

A deadly riot between Pompeians and Nucerians broke out at a gladiator show, and Rome banned such gatherings in Pompeii for ten years.

Which Latin words appear in the doorway mosaic of Pompeii's House of the Tragic Poet?

Cave canem means beware of the dog, and in a comic Roman novel by Petronius a dinner guest nearly falls over in fright at a painted dog bearing those words.

After an earthquake wrecked Pompeii in AD 62, which philosopher devoted a book of his natural science to earthquakes?

Seneca opened that book with the news from Pompeii, then argued that the great cause of earthquakes is air moving under the ground.

Which emperor visited Pompeii around AD 64 with his wife, whose family probably came from the town?

Nero was probably in the area to sing on stage, and at his debut he is said to have kept singing while an earthquake shook the theatre.

Who was emperor when the volcano erupted in 79 AD?

Titus had been emperor only a few months, and he picked former consuls to lead the relief effort for the stricken region of Campania.

How long did the eruption of 79 AD last?

Two days, and on the first of them so much pumice fell on Pompeii that the roofs of many houses caved in under the weight.

The AD 79 eruption column rose above the weather layer into which layer of the atmosphere?

The stratosphere was its limit: once the column could no longer hold up its own load it collapsed, sending avalanches of ash and gas racing down the mountain's slopes.

A 2010 study found that Pompeii victims long thought to have suffocated in ash were really killed by what?

Extreme heat of at least 250 °C was enough to kill instantly, even people sheltering indoors 10 kilometres from the vent.

Why were relatively few bodies found at Pompeii?

Most fled in time, because the eruption's opening phase of falling pumice gave them hours to get away.

Which writer left an eyewitness account of the eruption in two letters to the historian Tacitus?

Pliny the Younger wrote them because Tacitus had asked how his uncle, Pliny the Elder, died during the eruption.

Which saying did Rome's fleet commander at Misenum use to urge his helmsman on toward the eruption?

Fortune favours the brave, he told the pilot, steering on to help a friend at Stabiae, where he died.

Which actor played a Pompeii merchant in Doctor Who, five years before being cast as the Doctor himself?

Peter Capaldi's Doctor later remembered the merchant's face and decided he had chosen it to remind himself that his job is to save lives.

What discovery in 2018 undermined the traditional August date for the eruption?

Written in charcoal, it could not have survived long, so the eruption must have come soon after.

Which town near Pompeii, buried even deeper, preserved wooden beds and papyrus scrolls?

Herculaneum's covering hardened into rock many metres thick, which preserved wood and food but made the town far harder to excavate than Pompeii.

Which novelist, who opened another book with 'It was a dark and stormy night', wrote The Last Days of Pompeii?

Edward Bulwer-Lytton gave his name to a contest that for decades invited people to write the worst possible opening sentence of a novel.

Scientists say much of Pompeii's famous red wall paint was originally which colour, before the eruption changed it?

Yellow ochre turns red when heated, so much of the 'Pompeian red' the town is famous for was made by the eruption rather than by its painters.

What were Pompeii's first excavators in the 1700s mainly looking for?

Ancient art objects were the prize, and the finds set off a fashion as Europe's wealthiest families displayed art and copies of objects from the ruins.

Which king sponsored Pompeii's first excavations and later became King of Spain?

Charles of Bourbon inherited the Spanish throne in 1759 when his childless half-brother Ferdinand VI died, and he gave up his Italian crown to his son.

Which archaeologist, in charge from 1863, first succeeded in casting victims by pouring plaster into their voids in the ash?

Giuseppe Fiorelli's casts often still hold the victims' bones, so modern scans and X-rays can study the people inside them.

In a Pompeii address like VII, 12, 18, what does VII identify?

Region: the scheme let excavators document where each find was made, and the same addresses are still used today.

What did many notices painted along Pompeii's streets ask passers-by to do?

Elect a candidate, they urged, though not every backer helped: one notice has all the late drinkers asking for Vatia, another the petty thieves, perhaps as a joke or a rival's smear.

The Alexander Mosaic, showing Alexander the Great facing Darius, was found in which Pompeian residence?

The House of the Faun survived the eruption only to be hit by bombs in 1943, and parts of it had to be rebuilt after the war.

Which Roman goddess was the patron deity of Pompeii?

Venus took the blame for heartbreak too: one Pompeian scratched a verse on a wall vowing to break her ribs with clubs, since she had pierced his tender heart.

The famous frescoes in Pompeii's Villa of the Mysteries are usually read as a woman's initiation into which deity's cult?

Bacchus is the usual reading because the scenes show his followers, satyrs and maenads, and on the back wall the god himself sprawls across a companion's lap.

What was the Lupanar of Pompeii?

A purpose-built brothel, it takes its name from lupa, a Latin word for a prostitute that literally means she-wolf.

The 13 victims in Pompeii's Garden of the Fugitives died trying to reach what?

City gate: they were apparently making for one across 3.5 metres of fallen pumice when a pyroclastic flow overtook them.

Pompeii's graffiti are prized as rare records of which form of Latin?

Vulgar Latin was the everyday speech of ordinary Romans, not the polished language of books, and it is the form that grew into the Romance languages.

Which term do archaeologists use for a Roman snack bar, like one fully excavated at Pompeii in 2020?

A thermopolium kept food in jars set into its counter, and on this one the painted ducks and rooster matched animal bones found inside the jars.

What was the shallow pool set into the floor of a Pompeii house's atrium mainly for?

Catching rainwater falling through an opening in the roof, which then drained into an underground cistern and supplied the household.

Which people founded colonies across the bay from Pompeii in the 8th century BC and soon influenced the town?

The Greeks lost ground to the Etruscans, then won it back after the Etruscans were beaten in a sea battle off nearby Cumae in 474 BC.

Which Italic people took over Pompeii in the 5th century BC and later fought three wars against Rome?

The Samnites spoke Oscan, which stayed Pompeii's official language until Latin replaced it after Rome planted a colony of veterans there.

Which rebel leader's army, besieged on the volcano that later buried Pompeii, escaped down its cliffs on ropes of vines?

Spartacus led escaped gladiators, and once down the cliffs they caught the Roman force by surprise and seized its camp.

Which composer visited Pompeii's newly unearthed Temple of Isis as a teenager?

Mozart saw the temple on his Italian tour, and the visit is often said to have inspired The Magic Flute some twenty years later, though some scholars doubt the link.

In 2018, which animals were found at a villa just outside Pompeii, one still in its harness?

Horses: looters had already been digging at the villa, but one animal lay untouched by them, still wearing its bridle.

Which band filmed a 1971 concert in Pompeii's Roman amphitheatre without a crowd?

Pink Floyd played to empty seats because director Adrian Maben, back in the ruins hunting for his lost passport, felt the silent amphitheatre was the place.

Which British band's 2013 breakthrough hit was titled 'Pompeii'?

Bastille's singer Dan Smith says the song imagines a conversation between two victims of the eruption, stuck side by side for centuries.

A Roman eyewitness likened the AD 79 eruption cloud to which tree, with a tall trunk spreading into branches?

A pine: the cloud shot up like a very tall trunk, then spread out at the top, perhaps, he guessed, because its own weight pushed it outward.

In March 1944, an eruption wrecked dozens of which aircraft at an airfield near Pompeii?

American bombers, B-25s of the 340th Bombardment Group, were pelted with volcanic stones and ash that tore through their fabric and Plexiglas.

Where do archaeologists think people who settled in Pompeii's ruins after AD 79 lived?

Upper floors above the ash became homes, while the buried ground floors turned into cellars with hearths, ovens and mills, until about the 5th century.

A four-wheeled pilentum unearthed near Pompeii in 2021 is now thought to have carried whom?

Brides are the best guess, since its restored decoration ties it to marriage, and archaeologists reached it just before looters tunnelling through the villa.

What was blamed for the 2010 collapse of Pompeii's House of the Gladiators?

Heavy rain soaked into the structure, and in 2012 the EU and Italy funded a 105 million euro project to shore up walls across the site.

Which Game of Thrones star played a slave turned gladiator in the 2014 disaster film Pompeii?

Kit Harington bulked up with gruelling training to play Milo, a Celt whose parents were killed by the Roman commander he later confronts.

What liquid did Pompeii's fullers use to help clean cloth?

Urine supplied ammonia that lifted grease from wool, and Emperor Vespasian even taxed public urinals, asking whether the money smelled.