Pompeii Trivia
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48 free Pompeii trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Pompeii trivia covers the best-preserved snapshot of Roman life anywhere: a wealthy town of ten to twenty thousand people buried under metres of ash and pumice when Vesuvius erupted for two days in 79 AD, then forgotten for centuries until an aqueduct engineer bumped into painted walls in 1592. This quiz runs from the Oscan villages and the Greek, Etruscan and Samnite phases through Sulla's siege, the amphitheatre riot of 59 AD, the earthquake of 62 and Nero's visit, to the eruption itself: the eighteen hours of pumice rain, the pyroclastic surges, the 33-kilometre column, Pliny the Elder's fatal rescue voyage and his nephew's letters to Tacitus, and the evidence that has moved the date from August to October. It then covers the rediscovery under the Bourbons, Fiorelli's plaster casts and his grid of regions and blocks, the great houses and mosaics, the Lupanar and the graffiti, Herculaneum's carbonised scrolls, and the modern afterlife from Pink Floyd's audience-free concert to Bastille's hit. Easy questions suit anyone who has heard of Vesuvius; the expert tier is for classicists. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Pompeii, the eruption and its sites, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which volcano buried Pompeii in 79 AD?
Vesuvius
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.
Q 02Pompeii lies near which modern Italian city?
Naples
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.
Q 03Roughly how deep was the layer of ash and pumice that buried Pompeii?
About 6 metres
About 6 metres of ash and pumice sealed the town, and that sudden burial protected it from looting and the weather for centuries.
Q 04What were the raised stone blocks in the middle of Pompeii's streets for?
Crossing without getting wet
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.
Q 05Which Roman general besieged Pompeii in 89 BC after the town joined a revolt against Rome?
Sulla
Sulla then made the town a Roman colony and settled thousands of his veterans on land in and around it.
Q 06What happened in Pompeii's amphitheatre in AD 59?
A deadly riot between Pompeians and Nucerians
A deadly riot between Pompeians and Nucerians broke out at a gladiator show, and Rome banned such gatherings in Pompeii for ten years.
Q 07Which Latin words appear in the doorway mosaic of Pompeii's House of the Tragic Poet?
Cave canem
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.
Q 08After an earthquake wrecked Pompeii in AD 62, which philosopher devoted a book of his natural science to earthquakes?
Seneca
Seneca opened that book with the news from Pompeii, then argued that the great cause of earthquakes is air moving under the ground.
Q 09Which emperor visited Pompeii around AD 64 with his wife, whose family probably came from the town?
Nero
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.
Q 10Who was emperor when the volcano erupted in 79 AD?
Titus
Titus had been emperor only a few months, and he picked former consuls to lead the relief effort for the stricken region of Campania.
Q 11How long did the eruption of 79 AD last?
Two days
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.
Q 12The AD 79 eruption column rose above the weather layer into which layer of the atmosphere?
The stratosphere
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.
Q 13A 2010 study found that Pompeii victims long thought to have suffocated in ash were really killed by what?
Extreme heat
Extreme heat of at least 250 °C was enough to kill instantly, even people sheltering indoors 10 kilometres from the vent.
Q 21Scientists say much of Pompeii's famous red wall paint was originally which colour, before the eruption changed it?
Yellow
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.
Q 22What were Pompeii's first excavators in the 1700s mainly looking for?
Ancient art objects
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.
Q 23Which king sponsored Pompeii's first excavations and later became King of Spain?
Charles of Bourbon
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.
Q 14Why were relatively few bodies found at Pompeii?
Most fled in time
Most fled in time, because the eruption's opening phase of falling pumice gave them hours to get away.
Q 15Which writer left an eyewitness account of the eruption in two letters to the historian Tacitus?
Pliny the Younger
Pliny the Younger wrote them because Tacitus had asked how his uncle, Pliny the Elder, died during the eruption.
Q 16Which saying did Rome's fleet commander at Misenum use to urge his helmsman on toward the eruption?
Fortune favours the brave
Fortune favours the brave, he told the pilot, steering on to help a friend at Stabiae, where he died.
Q 17Which actor played a Pompeii merchant in Doctor Who, five years before being cast as the Doctor himself?
Peter Capaldi
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.
Q 18What discovery in 2018 undermined the traditional August date for the eruption?
A charcoal inscription dated 17 October
Written in charcoal, it could not have survived long, so the eruption must have come soon after.
Q 19Which town near Pompeii, buried even deeper, preserved wooden beds and papyrus scrolls?
Herculaneum
Herculaneum's covering hardened into rock many metres thick, which preserved wood and food but made the town far harder to excavate than Pompeii.
Q 20Which novelist, who opened another book with 'It was a dark and stormy night', wrote The Last Days of Pompeii?
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Edward Bulwer-Lytton gave his name to a contest that for decades invited people to write the worst possible opening sentence of a novel.
Q 24Which archaeologist, in charge from 1863, first succeeded in casting victims by pouring plaster into their voids in the ash?
Giuseppe Fiorelli
Giuseppe Fiorelli's casts often still hold the victims' bones, so modern scans and X-rays can study the people inside them.
Q 25In a Pompeii address like VII, 12, 18, what does VII identify?
Region
Region: the scheme let excavators document where each find was made, and the same addresses are still used today.
Q 26What did many notices painted along Pompeii's streets ask passers-by to do?
Elect a candidate
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.
Q 27The Alexander Mosaic, showing Alexander the Great facing Darius, was found in which Pompeian residence?
The House of the Faun
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.
Q 28Which Roman goddess was the patron deity of Pompeii?
Venus
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.
Q 29The famous frescoes in Pompeii's Villa of the Mysteries are usually read as a woman's initiation into which deity's cult?
Bacchus
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.
Q 30What was the Lupanar of Pompeii?
A purpose-built brothel
A purpose-built brothel, it takes its name from lupa, a Latin word for a prostitute that literally means she-wolf.