Original subtitles

Welcome to Italy. Behind us is Mount Vesuvius.

The volcano that buried the Roman town of Pompeii under thousands of

tonnes of ash and pumice in 79 AD.

Last year, we told you the story of the three days leading up

to that catastrophe.

And now, we're back again to tell you what happened next.

We'll reveal what occurred in the hours, the days and the centuries

after that cataclysmic eruption,

and how it devastated not just Pompeii, but this entire region.

We explore the extent of the devastation caused by the eruption.

They found these boat houses.

Every single one of them was filled with bodies.

We get access to the latest scientific investigations.

This is an exploded skull.

They - literally just boiled their brains? Yes.

And we reveal brand-new evidence transforming our understanding of

how the region recovered in the aftermath.

Oh, gosh look at that!

We tell the incredible story of how Pompeii was eventually rediscovered,

and then, plundered.

They stripped whatever they could find.

And bring things right up-to-date with special access

to a new excavation.

Now, we're entering this incredible house.

We discovered a lot of painting - and also, victims.

And we also investigate a real archaeological crime story

taking place in Pompeii today.

Found some here on the floor.

I think this could be a human vertebrae.

Pompeii is one of the world's greatest archaeological treasures.

The story of the devastation of this once-bustling Roman town

is one of the most dramatic and tragic in history.

But the little-told story of what happened to Pompeii and the

surrounding area after the eruption is just as astonishing.

The rediscovery of Pompeii over 1,500 years later turned what had

been an obscure, provincial Roman town into one of the most

famous places on Earth.

The rock, the ash that tragically killed thousands of people here

ironically preserved these streets, these buildings and their contents

from the ravages of time.

The way that Pompeii died allowed us to see how it lived.

The incredible preservation in Pompeii allows us to glimpse

everyday Roman life.

We can visit ordinary homes...

..shops...

..bathhouses and theatres.

And most movingly of all, here, the eruption preserved some of

the people frozen in their final moments of life

in the form of casts.

This is haunting - it's so easy to get enthusiastic, isn't it, Raksha,

about the mosaics and the archaeology here.

But this is where the true cost of what happened here

becomes very clear. Absolutely.

And I think people forget that these are real people.

Looking at the face here, you get a snapshot of horror and pain

from almost 2,000 years ago.

Recent archaeological discoveries suggest that the catastrophic

eruption that destroyed Pompeii struck at midday on 24 October,

79 AD - not in August, as previously thought.

In the first hours after the eruption, ash and pumice

rained down on Pompeii.

Metres accumulated in the streets.

What happened next here in Pompeii is really just part of the story.

In those hours after the eruption, this entire region was devastated.

This wasn't just any old region.

This was one of the richest and most densely-populated parts

of the Roman Empire.

The rich, volcanic soil here meant that there were a network of farms

and vineyards - while down on the coast, there were resorts and ports.

And one prosperous seaside resort eight miles north west of Pompeii

tells us a huge amount about what happened in the aftermath

of the eruption.

Down there is Herculaneum.

At least, the part of the Roman town that's been excavated.

Three quarters of it still lie beneath our feet.

Things went very differently here to how they went in Pompeii.

Pompeii was buried by about five metres of volcanic debris.

But here at Herculaneum... the town was buried by 25 metres!

This giant cliff is made from the debris of that eruption

of Mount Vesuvius.

What's interesting about this cliff is there's no pumice layer.

It's almost entirely composed of very fine volcanic ash.

And over the years, that's hardened into stone.

And what that suggests is that in the first 12 hours after

the eruption, Herculaneum was largely spared bombardment

by volcanic debris.

The millions of tonnes of pumice and ash spewing from Vesuvius

was blown south towards Pompeii.

But Herculaneum was just upwind of a volcano.

So, in the first phase of the eruption, the town largely

avoided the inundation.

That meant that in the first 12 hours after the eruption,

the people of Herculaneum had an opportunity to evacuate.

Sitting right next to the coast, the best way to escape was by sea.

This street would have been packed with a terrified mass of people

all heading down here, clutching their most precious possessions,

heading for the harbour, which lay at the bottom of this hill.

Now, we know that, really, most people would have made a run for it

because when archaeologists came to excavate all these houses,

they found very few bodies of people that stayed behind.

In Pompeii, the pumice raining down forced many to shelter

in their homes.

While in Herculaneum, evacuation was the obvious choice.

In 79 AD, the town of Herculaneum was up there,

and this was the seafront.

This was the beach.

And it was down here that the people of Herculaneum came once Vesuvius

starts to erupt.

And they'd have used any boat they could to try and get off the shore,

and get out to sea and to safety.

For a long time, it was thought that most of them did get away.

But then, archaeologists working down here made a horrific discovery.

For 12 hours after the eruption of Vesuvius, Pompeii was inundated

by metres of volcanic debris...

..while the nearby town of Herculaneum escaped

relatively unscathed.

But then, around midnight on that last day, the full force

of the volcano struck Herculaneum with staggering ferocity.

The vast column of debris spewing from Vesuvius collapsed,

causing an avalanche of superheated ash called a pyroclastic surge

to cascade down the volcano.

By the time the first pyroclastic surge reached Herculaneum,

it had lost much of its momentum.

It moved through the abandoned town without destroying the buildings,

then it came like a mighty waterfall over this cliff down onto the beach.

But the heat was still intense.

500 degrees centigrade.

And as it crashed onto the beach, nothing could survive.

For centuries, it was thought that almost everyone

in Herculaneum had escaped...

..until 1980, when archaeologists excavating the ancient seafront

began discovering bodies on the beach.

Then they found these boat houses.

And the full horror of what happened here became immediately apparent.

There are 12 of them in all.

Every single one of them was filled with bodies.

Men, women, and children who'd been seeking in vain to find shelter

down here, perhaps hoping for rescue from the sea.

Possibly there weren't enough boats for everyone.

In desperation, more than 300 people packed into these

boat houses seeking safety.

They're huddled together.

Children embraced by their parents.

Their final moments frozen in time.

I find these more affecting than the plaster casts of the human bodies

in Pompeii - you really get a sense here of the scale of this human

tragedy and the terror, the horror of the last few moments

of these people's lives.

The skeletons here today are copies.

The actual human remains have been removed and stored for preservation.

And they've undergone intensive scientific study,

including DNA analysis.

Raksha's gone along to find out what that reveals about how they died.

Analysis of the bones is under way in a lab above Herculaneum's

old ticket office.

The remains of 80 victims are stored here.

DRILL WHIRS

Pier Paolo Petrone has been extracting samples from them

to undertake the first-ever DNA analysis.

Paolo's just...drilling this part of the skull off, cos apparently

that's the best place to take a DNA sample from.

Gives you better results.

He's almost broken through.

But to be honest, it's almost giving me a jaw ache -

it's a bit like being at the dentist.

Yep. I've got it.

Just keep it like this - I got it. Ah.

Look at that. We can put it here.

That's my first DNA sample... that I've ever taken.

This sample will be sent for analysis - but excitingly,

the results from the first six men and six women have just come back.

What have you learnt about the people who died here at Herculaneum?

Some of these female - they were related to each other,

and there were local.

Some of them, there were close to each other in a chamber,

but some of them - they were in different chambers.

So, that tells us that probably, there were some extended families.

These initial results reveal for the first time, women from the

boat houses were related and native to this area of Italy.

But intriguingly, it's a very different story with the men.

We know that two men - they were not local people.

So, where do you think that these men came from?

We know that they came from the Middle East.

We don't know exactly from where, but - so we are sure that

they are not local people.

Herculaneum's a port town, isn't it?

I'm sure there's lots of migration, and people coming through

all the time, aren't they? Yes.

And we have historical proof that tell us that, in their town,

there were a lot of slaves and freedmen - also freedmen,

that they became very rich.

That's absolutely fascinating.

So, these foreign men were probably the women's slaves,

or their freed slave husbands.

So, what about all of these other bones on the table?

What are the effects that we can see on these skeletons of how they died?

I want to show you this skull.

This is an exploded skull... due to the very high temperature.

How do you know that?

Because you see this kind of black staining around the edges...

..and also inside.

It's very dark, actually, isn't it? Yes, yes.

And this dark staining tell us that the brain of these people

was just boiling.

And there was bleeding of the brain, and all the pressure caused

the people to die very sudden.

So, the pyroclastic flow was extremely hot?

Yeah, it's so very...

And it literally just boiled their brains? Yes.

And let the skulls to explode, and the long bones to break -

like this femur is the femur of a young man. See?

Just with very clear-cut edges. It...just snapped.

Gosh. If you break a bone, it'll never break like this.

And also, you can see here, this femur -

these red encrustations, you see?

And what are they?

This is iron.

So, iron and iron oxides are just the residuals of the vaporisation

of the blood of these people.

So, this is this poor person's blood that we can see on their bones? Yes.

So, this testifies that the people died very suddenly.

Their flesh was vaporised.

And then, very rapidly there was a replacement by the ash,

and the people were just covered by ash, and they stayed for

2,000 years like this.

I mean, actually, it's a really horrific way to die.

But the reality is, is that they didn't really feel it,

or they didn't really know it, because it was so quick. Exactly.

They had no time to feel anything.

They died just in a fraction of seconds.

It wasn't just the people of Pompeii and Herculaneum who died in

the first hours after the eruption.

The countryside around was filled with farms and luxurious villas.

The location of more than 150 villas has been identified

under these volcanic debris.

But there are certainly many, many more.

This vast mansion is one of the few that's been excavated.

Today, it's called Oplontis.

The villa lay on the coast halfway between Pompeii and Herculaneum.

It reveals the extraordinary luxury enjoyed in the area by Rome's elite

before the eruption.

This region was their summer playground, where they competed

to build the most lavish holiday homes.

This cavernous atrium is only one of more than 90 rooms and gardens

that have been found so far.

No-one knows how many others are still hidden.

These seaside palaces were designed for entertainment and hospitality,

crucial for networking.

Many had vast swimming pools, where serious pool parties

would have been thrown.

I wouldn't want to be on pool-cleaning duty.

Perfect for doing your lengths.

I think one length's plenty.

Oplontis was only a few miles - and downwind - from Vesuvius.

So, like Pompeii, it was inundated by metres of pumice in the first

hours after the eruption.

But no bodies were found here.

So, either no-one was at home, or they tried to get away.

Raksha, what's your thinking around casualties?

How many people do you think died in this catastrophe?

So, I think we have to look at Pompeii, and look at how many people

were recovered in the excavations.

We're thinking that about 3,000 people died our of an estimated

population of 15,000.

So, thousands must have escaped.

Well, you say "escape", but not necessary survive, cos I mean,

you can escape the city walls, the area that's now been excavated.

But lots of them would have perished, right? Because the roads

would've clogged up with refugees, it was pitch-black.

The pumice, the ash was falling - and then, every living thing

would've been obliterated by that pyroclastic surge.

The pyroclastic surge that struck Herculaneum was only the first of

a succession that swept down the volcano.

The first three superheated avalanches of ash

didn't actually reach Pompeii.

But the fourth did - obliterating all remaining life in the town.

19 hours after the eruption, the sixth and final surge struck.

The most powerful of all, it reached as far south as the port of Stabiae,

where more luxury villas lined a cliff above the town.

We're quite a long way from Vesuvius here, you can just make it out

on a hazy day like this.

In fact, we're about ten miles south.

You can see Pompeii way over there at the foot of the volcano.

You'd think that here, we'd be safe.

But that wasn't the case.

We know the reality of what unfolded at these villas above Stabiae,

thanks to the only first-hand account of the disaster to survive.

..written by the author Pliny the Younger.

He tells us his uncle, Pliny the Elder, sought safety here

after attempting to sail a rescue fleet to Pompeii.

Pliny took refuge in the villa of a friend called Pomponianus,

one of the grand villas that lined the clifftop here -

possibly this one.

His nephew tells that the ground was being shaken by violent quakes,

and so much pumice was coming through the hole in the atrium roof

that the doors were blocked up.

They headed to the beach, hoping to escape further away by boat.

But it seems they were caught up in the final pyroclastic surge.

Pliny, Rome's most famous and respected scientist,

was overcome by noxious gases... and died.

To discover how many others died here in Stabiae -

ten miles from the volcano - I'm meeting Paolo Gardelli,

who's overseeing excavations at the villas.

The day of the eruptions, everything here had been completely covered.

Probably just the top of the roof was -

that was sticking out of the ash.

So, were these buildings destroyed by just the fall of volcanic debris,

or by the surge that reached here?

By - both.

We know that at the beginning of the eruption, the falling ashes

and the falling pumice cover the villas of Stabiae, under six metres

of volcanic materials.

In the early morning of the second day of the eruptions -

so around 7.00 - we know that the sixth surge destroyed Stabiae.

And did many people die in that?

Er, so, during the excavation, we found a few bodies.

But we're sure that many other people survived.

So, they were able to escape? Probably, yes. Probably, yeah.

But what about Pliny the Elder?

Pliny, at that time, was... quite an old man.

So we can say that, in Stabiae, probably the old people,

the very young people died.

But fit people - probably they survived.

Sounds to me like Pliny and his team on the edge of the area where you

could survive - if you were closer than ten miles...

Yeah, probably, they would die. For sure, they would die.

So, that's a huge area? A huge area, quite a huge area.

So, when we're here in Stabiae, looking out to Vesuvius,

almost everything between us and Mount Vesuvius... Yeah.

..would have been a killing zone? Exactly.

So, as then port marshal wrote some years later -

it was a land of fire, a land of ashes.

So, we'll never know how many people in Pompeii died, cos even the people

who escaped the town could have been killed out on these roads,

in these fields as they were escaping? Exactly that.

Cos probably there are thousands of bodies still underground.

Thousands of people still there.

The extent of the devastation is shocking.

Any inhabitant who hadn't made it more than ten miles south

of Vesuvius would have died.

It's easy when you're talking about the scale of this gigantic tragedy

to forget about individuals.

And every so often, when you're exploring the archaeology here,

you do come across something that connects you with a particular

person in the past, even though it was so long ago.

And this is one of those moments - discovered recently by the

archaeologists who were excavating this site.

This is the drawing of a child - graffiti left on the wall

of this villa.

And it's a gladiator, the great stars - the football stars

of their time.

And you can see it's got the rectangular shield, the wrapping on

the right arm, and helmet.

This child might have gone to the arena and watched

this particular gladiator fight.

Makes you wonder whether the child that scrawled this on perhaps their

bedroom wall survived.

I'd like to think they did.

Many didn't.

Well, what was the fate of those who did escape the wrath of Vesuvius?

It's hard to imagine, looking out at this view now, that after the

eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, this entire area was a

blackened wasteland buried under volcanic debris.

The story of how this region recovered from that eruption

is rarely told, because there's so little evidence.

But an exciting new dig just down here in the town of Stabiae

has given us new insights into what happened after the disaster.

Raksha's gone to have a look.

What occurred here in the weeks after the eruption is being revealed

for the first time in this excavation of a large building

found in the centre of Stabiae.

How are you? Please come in. Hey, Giovanni!

SHE GASPS

HE SPEAKS IN ITALIAN

Giovanni Demeyer is showing me around.

I'm in my happy place now.

This is my happy place.

Come with me.

SHE CHUCKLES

Yep, got it.

Gosh. Well, look at this.

Absolutely just full of stuff, isn't it?

Tile, lots of like, roof debris... Yeah, pottery.

They've dug down three metres already.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

We detect the thickness of the archaeological levels.

And it is, in some parts, more than 80 metres deep.

We're not at the foundations, then?

No. This is the top of the first floor.

Hang on, so we're actually at the top of the buildings?

Yes, this is the first floor.

But these walls are very beautiful.

How old are these walls, then?

First century, before Christ.

So, these were here about 60-70 years before the eruption

of Vesuvius in 79 AD? OK, OK. You're right.

This excavation reveals that, by the time it reached Stabiae,

ten miles from the volcano, the pyroclastic surge didn't have the

energy to knock down upper stories.

And other new discoveries prove this building continued in use

for many years afterwards.

I can show you the proof of the date of this level.

And it is an oil lamp...

..still entire, with the... Ohh.

I love it. It's so beautiful and perfect.

And I love this design - it's like as though it was made yesterday.

Yeah.

So, Giovanni, how old is this lamp?

This is coming from the fourth century after Christ.

And the palm that you can see here is the proof of the dating

of this object.

That's unbelievable, cos in my head, I just think

of Herculaneum and Pompeii.

They got completely destroyed. The people left.

But that's not the case here, is it?

Yeah, this is the really exciting stuff.

Pompeii and that volcano... was dead with the eruption.

Stabiae was recovered, because the effect of the eruption was not

so strong, like in the other parts.

And the people lived here for more than four...centuries.

So, how quickly did they come back, then, after the eruption?

Probably they never went away.

They stayed here and reconstructed, and repaired everything

in a, sort of, a continuity.

That's incredible. Mm-hm. Life just carries on, doesn't it?

While the people of Stabiae could return to their town in the weeks

after the eruption, the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum

was too great.

To discover what happened to the inhabitants who escaped those towns,

we need to look at the area on the opposite side of Vesuvius,

which survived relatively unscathed.

Roman Naples is hidden under the modern city,

but ten miles west are the exposed ruins of Cuma,

a city that was two-and-a-half times bigger than Pompeii.

This is the road that leads from Pompeii in the south,

through Cuma here, to Rome in the north.

It was along this road that the survivors traipsed -

refugees beginning the process of rebuilding their shattered lives.

And it was also along this road that news of the disaster spread

from Pompeii to Rome in less than a day, thanks to the remarkable

Roman Imperial Postal Service - the cursus publicus.

The postal networks spanned the empire.

It can be seen on an extraordinary map called

the Tabula Peutingeriana.

All right, let's get this laid out.

It was made in the 13th century, but copied from an older Roman map.

This is a reproduction of the six-metre long original.

Right.

That's disappointing.

That should help.

We're getting somewhere.

Right.

What's fascinating is the original version of this map must have been

created before the eruption.

Because Pompeii is on it, as is Herculaneum here.

By the medieval period, these towns were buried and long forgotten.

News of the eruption would have been sent by riders in relay.

Around every 12 miles, there were mansiones - places that supplied

food and fresh horses.

Riders carried laurel leaves if they had good news,

but a feather on a spear indicated bad news requiring great haste.

So, when the eruption began, riders probably left Pompeii,

galloped along this road here, passed through Cuma, changed horses,

got fresh horses, allowing them to speed north along this very

road here, and then, join the Villa Appia, which like the big M1

of ancient Italy.

And then, straight to Rome - where, as you'd expect...

..all roads lead.

In Rome, the news would have been told first to the Emperor Titus.

He'd only been ruler for a few months when the disaster struck.

The Roman historian Suetonius said that Titus showed not only

the concern of an emperor, but the deep love of a father.

He sent aid from the imperial coffers, and two senators down

to oversee relief efforts.

He also visited the area twice in the year that followed himself,

probably staying here in Cuma.

In the years after the eruption, imperial money was used to

regenerate the cities that had survived.

When Titus died only two years after the eruption, his successor,

Domitian, continued the financial.

Here at Cuma, there's evidence of their large-scale building projects.

In the middle of Cuma is this hill known as an Acropolis.

The Romans would have had beautiful temples on top of it.

It's an impressive feature - but it was actually a bit of a pain,

because it blocked off the harbour and the sea on the far side

from the town over here.

So, the Romans decide to build a road.

And in typical style, they didn't build a road around it...

..but straight through it.

Before the eruption, there was a small tunnel under the Acropolis.

But in the years soon after....

..it was massively enlarged...

..probably thanks to imperial aid.

In later years, Christians used it as a catacomb.

Corpses were laid to rest in these niches -

some have crosses carved above them.

Which all shows that, unlike Pompeii, where the clock stopped

in October, 79 AD, life here in Cuma went on for centuries -

right up to the Middle Ages.

Cuma also saw a population boom in the years following the disaster.

Larger public baths had to be built, along with new temples.

This was the town's amphitheatre, and it had to be enlarged.

This whole level I'm sitting on now was added,

almost doubling its capacity.

And it's thought this was because of the huge numbers of refugees from

Pompeii and Herculaneum who were coming here to settle in Cuma.

New research has revealed that family names found on tombs in

Pompeii appear here in Cuma for the first time after the disaster,

and those families marry one another.

So, it seems that this town of Cuma played host to a

tight-knit community of Pompeiian refugee families.

Whilst over in Naples, one area of the city was even

renamed the Herculaneum Quarter.

But some people did return to Pompeii in the early years

following the eruption.

There's evidence that they tunnelled down through the five metres

of debris covering the city.

They were possibly refugees trying to salvage their belongings -

or more likely, scavengers searching for valuables.

This is the forum, the town square of Pompeii.

I'm surrounded now by grand public buildings and temples.

And these would've been tall enough so they wouldn't have been entirely

covered by the volcanic debris.

That would have acted as a giant signpost.

Salvagers would have known this was the location of this forum,

and there would have been rich pickings if they borrowed down here.

The temples would have been faced with valuable marble.

The piazza would have been lined with dozens of fine statues.

These are the plinths where the statue stood.

In fact, you can still see the clamps here, which would have

held the statues onto them.

What's interesting is that in the 19th century when this place

was excavated, none of the statues were found.

And almost all of the marble had been stripped from the walls.

Many houses also show signs of systematic tunnelling.

In a doorway in one of the villas, there was a message scrawled on

the wall that said in Latin, "House tunnelled through".

Archaeologists also discovered many holes in walls -

made by the scavengers prepared to risk their lives tunnelling deep

into the unstable volcanic debris.

Right, here's one of the holes now.

Classic tunnel made by the people that were burrowing down here.

It's amazing to think what they would've discovered in this room.

It would've been presumably partially filled with pumice

and ash, collapsed ceiling roof structures, maybe all the way up

to the top - but maybe there's a void up there, and they were

crawling on top of a layer of debris here - digging down, no doubt,

looking for valuables.

And when they came to a wall - beautiful wall, covered in murals -

they weren't there for the artwork.

"Bang", through they went, looking for treasures that lay beyond.

But over the centuries, Pompeii was forgotten.

People returned to farm the rich volcanic soil.

But some flicker of it must have remained in the folk memory -

as the area of wheat fields and vineyards above the buried town

was known as the... SPEAKS IN ITALIAN

.."the city".

And that city is still giving up its secrets, as Raksha discovers with

special access to the latest excavations.

We're, like, one of the first people since 79 AD to walk

on this street, are we? Yes, you are right.

And I investigate the shocking lengths modern-day scavengers

are going to, to steal Pompeii's treasures.

HE GRUNTS

Look at this.

That's extraordinary.

For more than 1,000 years after the 79 AD eruption,

Pompeii and the surrounding towns and villas lay lost and forgotten

under the volcanic ash.

Pompeii finally re-emerged into history in 1592,

when an underground water pipe was being laid across fields

near the foot of Vesuvius.

And this is the famous pipe here, encased in this stonework.

And as you can see, they dug right down to the Roman street level,

straight through Pompeii houses, all sorts of public buildings.

And then, check this out, this is really cool.

You can see here the level to which they dug.

This is original Roman.

And this line of tiles shows where, in the 16th century,

they excavated that trench.

So, this is all reconstructed.

An acclaimed architect, Domenico Fontana, was in charge

of the project.

He knew exactly what he'd found.

Fontana wrote in his diary.

"Beyond doubt, what we see before us is the celebrated city

"once called Pompeii.

She shows us her towers, houses, theatres, and temples, which one

"an discern almost whole."

But the duke employing Fontana did not share his excitement.

He refused to allow any further investigations.

He ordered this trench back-filled.

And once again, Pompeii was forgotten.

Buried Roman ruins were next stumbled upon

around a century later.

In 1709, a well was dug in this town that had grown up on the coast,

eight miles north west of Pompeii.

The workers start to pull up slabs of beautiful marble.

A French aristocrat, Emmanuel d'Elbeuf,

was building a mansion nearby, so he was in the market for marble.

He decided to cut out the middleman and bought the well for himself.

First, a worker, and then, d'Elbeuf himself were strapped into slings

and lowered 15 metres down the well.

I'm taking a slightly easier route - these stairs,

which were added later.

Here is the well that d'Elbeuf came down that day.

Wow.

Whoa, that's a long way, that must have been quite an adventure.

At the bottom, he discovered this cavity, and he started crawling

around and found broken bits of marble and statues.

And quite quickly, he realised this must be a Roman theatre.

And it could only be a theatre from the lost town of Herculaneum that

the Roman authors had talked of.

A group of convicts were sent down here and told to tunnel through

A group of convicts were sent down here and told to tunnel through

this theatre and effectively mine it for treasure.

And they've left us this warren of tunnels that they hacked out.

Look at this one - oh, yeah, through here.

And luckily, they didn't take all the murals, they left some here.

So, you can still see some beautiful Roman painting.

Look at that. It's been underground ever since that invasion in 79,

so the colours are still perfect.

Bit of graffiti from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Look at up there on the arch, it's beautiful.

And they stripped whatever they could find.

Slowly, these convicts hollowed out more and more of this structure

until they'd uncovered pretty large parts of the theatre.

They revealed the stage...

..steps to the auditorium...

..and some of the rows of seats that, in total,

would've accommodated up to 2,500 people.

This is where the people of Herculaneum would have sat

side-by-side, watching the action on the stage below.

It's a Roman theatre buried under 25 metres of volcanic rock.

I don't think I've ever been anywhere so remarkable.

D'Elbeuf didn't have the money to explore beyond the theatre.

But 25 years later, in 1734, a new king seized the throne

of southern Italy.

King Charles was part of the Bourbon dynasty who ruled Spain.

He was keen to bring glory to his new kingdom by unearthing

its ancient treasures.

An army of tunnelers was sent underground -

usually convicts and soldiers - to dig a warren of tunnels to try

and mine anything of value.

They came in through doors, they liked to work down walls

because they realised that lots of the statues and sculptural bits on

the walls, they were very valuable, as were some of these frescoes.

They'd find a nice one and they'd chop it off,

and haul it up to the surface.

Anything everyday was discarded as worthless.

Anything of value was carted off to the magnificent palace

that Charles had built for himself just next door to show off

all of his new treasures.

Raksha's gone to look at it.

King Charles built the vast Portici Palace right next door

to the buried ruins of Herculaneum.

And he decorated it with the plunder he found.

This grand staircase was built using marble from Herculaneum.

And so was the altar in the chapel.

These statues are also from Herculaneum.

And here is an original Roman mosaic floor.

It was taken out in sections, and then, re-laid here.

The style of decoration is copied from the houses

discovered in Herculaneum.

And an entire wing was set aside as a private museum.

But Charles was possessive.

Only select visitors were allowed in, and were banned

from making sketches.

Most shockingly, frescoes that weren't removed to the palace were

defaced to prevent others having them.

Luckily for us, most of Charles's collection is now housed in

the museum at Naples, where we can all enjoy it.

But it does make me angry as an archaeologist that through his

plundering of the site, we've lost so much information.

Some of the tunnels dug by King Charles

in the 18th century still exist.

I love this bit - getting to the parts that are closed.

They head off into the areas of Herculaneum that haven't been

fully excavated in modern times.

So, I'm now, inside this tunnel, and can you imagine operating down here

in the 18th century? It would've been cramped, confined,

you've got 25 metres of rock above you, there were frequent collapses,

and noxious gases oozed out from this volcanic debris.

But look at this, this is why they were down here.

They were finding these marvels beneath the soil.

This is a grand pillar from some building still entombed

in this hardened, volcanic ash.

And it just keeps on going down here.

Imagine the scale of these tunnels, the scale of what's left

of Herculaneum, buried in this rock.

I'm at the end of the tunnel now, I've come to a place full of spider

webs and spiders, very nice. Let's get rid of some of those.

There we go.

Now, look on the floor here.

A mosaic.

I mean, this is partially covered by the ash that has been here

since that eruption in 79 AD. Look at this.

That's amazing. I'm the first person to see this little piece of mosaic

in nearly 2,000 years.

Also in the tunnel, you can see the thing that

makes Herculaneum unique.

Now, this section of tunnel has got lots and lots of carbonised wood.

Look, there is, sticking out of the debris up there.

There's a beam - looks like a beam, and perhaps a bit of roofing.

Bit of furniture.

There's loads of wood up there.

And then, we got some debris down here.

Some of it's fallen down to the ground here, too.

For the 18th century tunnelers, carbonised wood was, well,

just a waste - probably threw it away.

And really, who can blame them?

But for modern archaeologists - eccentric as they are - like Raksha,

this carbonised wood is the most precious thing you can

find in Herculaneum.

The superheated pyroclastic surge that struck Herculaneum

instantly carbonised wood, turning it into charcoal.

It was buried so deep, water and air couldn't penetrate,

preserving entire objects intact.

The extraordinary wooden furniture discovered in Herculaneum

isn't on display.

The fact that I've been given permission to come and explore

the organic conservation lab in Herculaneum is unreal.

I mean, just look at this. Just look at this bed.

It's absolutely perfect.

And you've just got this beautiful, kind of, zigzaggy, dog-leg

kind of motif running all the way on the edge at the back.

And it seems like as though you could just go to IKEA

and pick one up. It's just absolutely stunning.

This place is incredible.

All these domestic items showing how people lived in Herculaneum.

So, you have this brilliant chest here.

A shrine that's been partially reconstructed.

And what I really love about these pieces is

the incredible craftsmanship.

Here, you can see the figure of a dog.

I can actually see teeth that have been carved in its jaw.

And it actually looks like a hunting dog.

Got this amazing swirly, shaggy coat that's been carved

all the way down his back.

But the thing that really wrenches at my heart strings is this cot.

It still rocks.

And I've been told that when it was excavated,

inside, they found the remains of a small baby.

It wasn't these everyday objects King Charles was searching for

in the 18th century.

He was only interested in treasure and artwork.

And his tunnelling at Herculaneum had proven so fruitful,

he decided to try for more Roman ruins.

His attention turned to the fields locals called...

HE SPEAKS IN ITALIAN

..unaware it was the location of ancient Pompeii.

This is the ground level following the volcanic eruption.

And for centuries, local people would find artefacts down here

in the soil, or their ploughs would hit the top of stone walls

that seemed to be buried.

Little can they have realised, though, the extent of what lay

beneath them - because underground here was Pompeii.

By the middle of the 18th century, official excavations began.

It was easier to dig here than Herculaneum because the volcanic

matter was less dense and it was shallower,

but it was very much potluck.

You dig a big hole, find what was ever at the bottom of it,

and move on to another one.

After more than one-and-a-half millennia, buried beneath the ash,

Pompeii gradually began to re-emerge.

Over the next 200 years, great temples...

..theatres, and villas were rediscovered.

In the 19th century, archaeologists finally took over

from the treasure hunters.

And in 1910, work began to link together all the excavated

areas across Pompeii.

An army of diggers made their way systematically from one end

to the other - it was excavation on an almost industrial scale.

It soon became clear that this was a mighty thoroughfare running from

one side of Pompeii straight through the middle to the other.

And it was as thronged with the people of Pompeii in the ancient

world as it is with tourists today.

It's been called the "Street of Abundance".

Today, two thirds of the town has been unearthed,

revealing one of the world's greatest archaeological treasures.

But it was the protective layer of ash that preserved it for centuries.

Now removed, Pompeii faces the ravages of time again.

As a result, it's an ongoing battle to save what's

already been uncovered.

There's scaffolding in many places, and the streets echo

to the sound of construction work.

Sadly, that's a fight that's sometimes being lost.

Walls are collapsing and frescoes are fading.

And that means that it's very, very rare to find new digs going on into

previously unexcavated ground.

But there is one major excavation going on at the moment...

..and Raksha has been given special permission to visit.

Today, 1,940 years after the eruption,

another chapter in Pompeii's story is being written.

An incredibly rare excavation uncovering a new area

of Pompeii is under way.

The volcanic debris is being cleared from this street of houses -

revealing it for the first time since the disaster.

Hello, professore!

Hello! Welcome.

Be careful. You are walking on lapilli - on the volcanic material.

It's very soft, and very... It's very soft, very dangerous.

Please, this way.

The archaeologists are on summer break, so Pompeii's director,

Massimo Osanna, is showing me around.

I've got goose bumps on my arms, cos we're, like, one of the first

people since 79 AD to walk on this street, aren't we?

Yes, you are right.

Because, for example, if you see this street - until there?

It is a perfect street.

In ten metres, the street disappears because they were

repairing the street.

The workers were in progress.

Is that why we've got these, like, blocks in the street, as well?

Also the block - this is not normal.

Professor Osanna is allowing me inside a house that's only

just been excavated.

And here, we enter in this new house with a lot of discovery.

But we can start here, from here, because there is something

very nice, but funny. OK.

What does mean?

THEY LAUGH What...why?

Well, I'm not sure my mother would let me write that on the front

of the house. Gosh! OK, this way.

I'm blushing now. SHE GIGGLES

And here, we are in the main room of the house.

The room - the atrium, with all around the room -

sleeping room, the kitchen this way.

But this is really a terrific room.

Because we discovered in this room a lot of skeletons.

So, there were women and children waiting for somebody coming

for helping them.

But at the end, it was impossible to escape because everywhere

was full of lapilli.

So, it was very, very difficult to go out.

So, they're just hiding in there? Yes.

We can see also all the stuff they put on the door to protect them.

So, this was like their safe room, and they kind of just barricaded

the door to stop everything else from coming in?

Yes. It's very, very sad.

Very sad. That's absolutely tragic.

Yes, incredible, really...

..you can imagine the last moment of despair in the last

moment on Pompeii.

And here, we enter in the private part of the house.

With the banqueting room, a very beautiful... Absolutely stunning.

..banqueting room.

I really love coming into the houses of Pompeii, because everything is

so vivid and bright.

And this is vivid and so bright - thanks to the new excavation,

because with the new excavation, we are able to see the original colour.

And now, our goal now is to preserve in this way, because the previous

excavation, restoring technique was not so...not so good.

So very, very beautiful is this portrait. Mmm.

Maybe this is the domina...domina.

So... The lady of the house. ..lady of the house.

Or the grandmother, because her hairstyle is like the

mother of Nero, because... Oh! ..of course, it was very -

for the ladies, very fashionable...

They were copying all the emperor's wives? Yes.

So, maybe she is the grandmother of the women in the house.

I'd love it because, especially with that portrait,

it makes everything really personal.

And it makes me sad to think that she might be one of the people that

were hiding in that room, and she died in there.

The bodies of the victims discovered in the house have been taken to

Pompeii's lab for preservation and analysis.

So, here they are.

These are those women and children that were found in that room

in that house.

There are 11 individuals here.

There are four adult females, and the rest of them are children.

And the osteoarchaeologist thinks that the children are between

the ages of two and 12.

I just can imagine them huddling in that room

and barricading themselves in.

It's an incredibly sad story.

But the thing that haunts me is that...

..this person here is an older lady.

She's about 50-plus, we don't know her exact age.

But it just reminds me of that portrait of the domina,

the female head of the household.

And it makes me wonder whether this is her.

It's an astonishing connection to make.

That official excavation here in Pompeii sadly hasn't been

the only bit of digging in this region recently.

Shockingly, robbers have been digging tunnels down to loot

treasures from buried ancient villas outside the town's walls.

I've got special permission from the police to go and visit

the crime scene.

700 metres outside the walls of ancient Pompeii,

police have recently made a shocking discovery.

Criminals have been stealing Roman artefacts by digging a network

of tunnels for a previously-unexcavated villa.

I've been given permission to visit the crime scene...

Ciao. Buongiorno!

..by the investigating officer, Salvatore Sorrentino.

Follow me. Sure thing.

This is the entrance. Si.

So what he's saying is that inside this building there is a tunnel,

a clandestine tunnel that leads down under the volcanic debris

and in to the archaeology here around Pompeii, and that the person

who lives in this house is currently being prosecuted for the crime

of stealing antiquities.

They deny the charges.

The tunnels burrow into a huge ancient Roman villa buried deep

below the modern houses.

They extend for almost 100 metres.

And Salvatore is taking me into them.

But it's dangerous, so we need the help of the fire brigade

specialist cave and mountain rescue team.

Ciao...

The SAF.

The outhouse containing the secret entrance has been seized

by the police.

INDISTINCT SPEECH

It's amazing. It's a vertical shaft heading straight down there.

A robber tunnel ten metres down.

A ladder and harness system was set up to get us safely

into the tunnels.

Once into my safety equipment,

the question is whether, at six-foot-five,

I'll fit down the shaft. Right, I'm going in.

OK. OK.

Whoa! Oh, that's tight.

Just like the 18th century Bourbon tunnellers,

the modern robbers followed the internal walls of the buried villa.

Various other tunnels off to right and left.

Police believe these tunnels into the Roman villa were being dug

for more than ten years.

There is volcanic debris under my knees and hands here.

The walls are covered in concrete.

Which they sprayed to provide some stability.

Because it's pretty dangerous business when you are mining

illegally through layers of pyroclastic surge.

There's a ventilation plate that the thieves installed.

To go through all this effort they must have been discovering

large quantities of valuable treasures.

Oh, my goodness.

Tragically, it's unlikely we'll ever know what was stolen and sold

on the black market.

But this was certainly an important palatial villa.

Towards this area. Wow.

Oh, my goodness.

MAN SPEAKS ITALIAN

Portico? OK. Yeah.

So it's all filled up with volcanic debris.

We're actually walking on the ceiling, but this might be

three, four metres. Like, there is a

beautiful one at Stabia that I walked along.

Cryptoportico is the name given to vaulted corridors in Roman villas.

The one I'm exploring was possibly this villa's service entrance.

This is huge, it stretches for miles down there.

Getting down here along the top of this arched corridor,

I can see the Roman brickwork, Roman masonry, it stretches miles

off down there. At the end of it it's filled up with volcanic debris.

But there's a side passage which I'm told even the authorities

at Pompeii have never been down.

At the bottom of this side passage

the police discovered a remnant of the villa's stolen riches.

A lot of volcanic debris just collapsing in on me here.

Ooh, look at this. Look at this.

These are some Roman frescoes.

You can just make out the red colour there.

They've only been seen by the

robbers, police officer and me in nearly 2,000 years.

The thieves appear to have chopped out and removed every

fresco they found.

You can see where the angle grinders have gone in and chopped

the frescoes out - such a shame.

I can just make out a figure, I think.

I think that's a figure. That's extraordinary.

This solitary figure has survived so much.

As we make our way out, I make another discovery.

I found something here on the floor.

I'm no expert, but I think this could be a human vertebrate.

Check this out.

This could well be the vertebrae of somebody who was sheltering here.

We know that in other villas of this size, people did seek shelter

in these long, strongly built corridors like this one here.

But it wasn't enough when that pyroclastic surge came and submerged

the people even hiding in these strong spaces.

Incredibly, I'm the first person to discover possible human remains

in this villa.

There's life at the end of the tunnel.

Ah, daylight. This is it.

This is actually one of the rooms of the villa because following

the discovery of these criminal tunnels, proper archaeologists

took over and carried out proper excavations.

This is one of the rooms they uncovered.

They've made some extraordinary discoveries.

The excavation is across the road from the house containing the tunnel

entrance, and the archaeologists have just discovered the villa's

stables with the remains of the horses still inside.

It's the only discovery of its kind ever made.

And these aren't just any old horses, they're big, strong horses.

They're owned by someone high status.

Perhaps they were in the military

or perhaps they just loved riding, but this stable

and the villa attached to it was

obviously owned by someone very wealthy.

Horses frozen just as they were at the exact moment they were hit

by that pyroclastic surge,

and just like with the human remains, they poured plaster

into the voids and these casts came out. This one is almost perfect.

You can see it some paces through the plaster where the bonus

has survived. That one, the plaster cast isn't as effective

and you can see much more bone there.

But look at this. This is part of the horse's skull.

And here, this is fascinating. You can see the metalwork here.

They've been tacked up.

They were wearing a harness. They were in their bridles.

And this, well, it means probably that the horses had been prepared

for someone to make a rapid escape.

These discoveries are the very latest chapter in the story

of what happened next here at Pompeii. That enormously destructive

eruption of Vesuvius 2,000 years ago left a unique

archaeological legacy.

But that legacy has been abused over the years - people have robbed

and destroyed far too much of that archaeology.

And that continues today as these robber tunnels show.

But when that legacy is treated with the respect and the expertise

and the honour it deserves, well,

then we get an unprecedented view into what life was like

in the Roman world.

And the people and the animals that died here

achieve a kind of immortality.

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