Original subtitles

With the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD

began a story that hasn't received much attention so far.

From the disaster that destroyed Pompeii,

new possibilities arose.

Crisis prevention.

Fertile soils.

Architectural innovations.

All of which were to benefit future generations.

The Gulf of Naples.

For many people, a place of longing.

Life is good at Mount Vesuvius.

The climate is mild, and the soil is fertile.

And the food is just delicious.

Already in ancient times, this climate first attracted Greek colonists,

then the Roman jet-set.

The rich and super-rich built their beach villas here.

And along the way they profit from the agricultural produce.

What the Romans didn't know:

They were building on a powder keg.

When an eruption of Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum,

the Roman world was shell-shocked.

Archaeologist Ersilia d'Ambrosio goes on a search for clues.

What happened after the catastrophe?

Eyewitness accounts tell of the fatal eruption.

The later fate of the region however is lesser known.

What makes the soil at the Gulf so incredibly fertile is volcanic earth.

Nevertheless, the volcano is the most dangerous enemy of the people here.

Since time immemorial, nothing had happened.

Vesuvius lay peaceful for 2,000 years.

Hence the fact that the volcano can turn a lush, blooming landscape

into a kind of moonscape in a matter of hours

must have been felt even more dramatic to the Gulf residents.

Pompeii was buried completely under volcanic ash.

This sudden death was to turn the city into myth.

Why does Pompeii remain so present in the collective memory?

Why did Pompeii become a myth?

And why do millions of people still visit the city today,

so many years after its demise and its rediscovery?

Because Pompeii is a snapshot of the Roman past?

You could use a comparison to explain this.

Pompeii is a little bit like the ancient heroes.

The saying goes, "Who is loved by the Gods, dies young."

Basically, that is the destiny that befell Pompeii.

Because it disappeared so quickly,

the city became immortal.

The eruption lasted for several hours.

In his letters,

Pliny the Younger emphatically describes the fear and helplessness of the people.

An enormous explosion happened between 10 and 11 a.m.

that tore open the ground of the crater and blew up the volcanic chimney.

At first, the volcano only catapulted lethal stones.

Later on, gas clouds caused the death by asphyxiation of many people in Pompeii,

Herculaneum, and the whole region.

Buildings were completely overwhelmed.

Peoples' livelihoods were destroyed.

Massimo Osanna is the director of the archaeological site.

He knows the history of Pompeii before and after the eruption.

Ersilia meets him at the Forum of the old Roman city.

Like the rest of the city, this square was

completely buried after the eruption in 79 AD.

What measures were applied here, right after the catastrophe,

by the imperial administration

and, above all, the then Emperor Titus?

Poor Titus had to handle this catastrophe only months after assuming office.

It was a crucial test for him right away,

which he passed with flying colors, I have to admit.

He appointed a commission for the rebuilding of Campania

that assessed the situation immediately,

of course, rendering largely negative results.

They quickly found that rebuilding anything

in Pompeii and Herculaneum was impossible,

because the cities were completely buried.

The commission, however, probably applied measures regarding public places,

in particular the forum.

It looked as if it had been plundered when it was excavated in the 19th century.

There was no marble left embellishing the building, no bronze statues,

there were only the foundations, without any marble coating or statues.

Clearly, the commission got involved, because it was a public place,

so anything that could be saved, would be saved.

The bronze was probably melted, the marble reused.

Public property was recycled.

Titus only succeeded his father Vespasian in June 79 AD.

The new emperor proved a brilliant crisis manager,

somewhat surprising for his contemporaries.

Before he became emperor he wasn't terribly popular.

He was known for his cruelty, his arbitrariness.

ANCIENT HISTORIAN

He was seen as a charlatan, a bit like a little boy,

and the people gossiped about

his alleged affair with a Jewish princess

called Berenice.

This was a bit similar to Marc Anthony and Cleopatra.

This association worried the people.

But his reputation changed completely when he became emperor

and handled the eruption of Vesuvius very well,

as well as a big fire in Rome.

Firstly, Titus ordered all vital supplies to reach survivors in the area.

Food, clothes, medical supplies.

Soon, the rebuilding of the Roman road network was started.

After the eruption, masses of mud had buried the roads,

raised the ground level and moved the coastline by 2 km.

The reconstruction of the infrastructure was the top priority for the Romans.

Reconstructing a Roman road shows us, however, how laborious this work is.

Back then, imperial curators assessed the possibilities.

Just excavate

or build new roads?

The Roman historian Suetonius told us

that Titus not only proved himself an assertive statesman,

but he also helped his subjects like a loving father.

However, he had close ties to the region around Mount Vesuvius.

The imperial family used to spend the summer in their country villas here.

In order to console the survivors personally

and to find out about the progress of his measures,

Titus visited the region only months after the eruption.

He even contributed to the relief effort out of his own pocket.

It was to be the biggest private donation in the long history of the Roman Empire.

The Roman state provided the manpower and logistics for the reconstruction.

Its army worked like a reliable machine, not only during war times.

They were organized brilliantly.

They didn't start at one point and finish at another.

ARCHAEOLOGIST

There were countless construction sites,

all working on small portions and joining them in the end,

hence increasing the speed.

So the Romans built a big road in a short period of time,

in months, maybe a few years.

However, the reconstruction

of the road network and the most important infrastructure

was only fully completed under Emperor Hadrian,

some 55 years later.

The eruption also caused the public administration and courts to collapse.

The emperor immediately tried to counteract chaos and lawlessness.

Above all, land tenures had to be sorted out.

The proprietors had to know where their land ended and the neighbor's started.

All boundary markers had gone,

because Pompeii was buried under six meters of ash and stones,

Herculaneum under 20 meters of volcanic slag.

So they didn't know anymore which plot of land was whose.

Titus and his envoys began to allocate the land from scratch.

As soon as people know which plot is theirs,

they can start working it, growing plants, going back to using it again.

From that point on, things were looking up again around Vesuvius.

At the National Archaeology Museum in Naples,

Ersilia d'Ambrosio meets Ferdinando De Simone.

She wants to know about the traditional agriculture of the ancient region

and understand which conditions the reconstruction faced.

They meet in front of the famous Bacchus fresco.

from the Casa del Centenario.

It connects the God of wine directly to Vesuvius.

Wine, the production of wine was Pompeii's main business.

As today, back then it was very difficult to know

whether it was going to be a good or bad vintage

and how nature could be controlled.

Until a few decades ago, people relied on the saints,

in ancient times on gods.

Agriculture, wine in particular, was the economic driver.

Hence, it was exported from Pompeii to the whole empire?

Yes, to the whole empire.

And if we think about the first century AD

we see a very progressive Roman economy in all of Campania.

The whole area around the volcano

was easily able to source grain and oil from other regions

and focus on wine production itself.

We have to imagine

that two thirds of Vesuvius were covered in vineyards, according to the sources.

The wine from Campania was very well-known and could be exported everywhere.

CAMPANIA

Amphorae findings prove that the wine from the Vesuvius was shipped to Greece,

Gaul,

Spain,

Britain,

North Africa,

and even India.

Above all, it's the region's excellent wine that explains

why Titus invested so much money and manpower

into the reconstruction efforts.

Pliny the Elder gushes about the "happy land,

its liquid product famed everywhere and making everyone tipsy".

All self-respecting Romans drank wine,

the elite as well as the poor.

Wine was produced in all of Italy, even in all of the empire.

The Romans valued the culinary experience.

Sitting together, drinking wine, conversing, telling stories.

Wine and everything connected to it

is very significant for the Roman social life.

The Romans typically produced

what we would call fortified wine,

so a very strong wine

not unlike port.

They then diluted it.

I mean, level-headed Romans would dilute their wine.

It is estimated that ancient Pompeii had 80 to 95 wineries,

and roughly 10,000 to 12,000 inhabitants.

One tavern for approximately 125 people.

An ancient tavern also served as a food stall.

Food containers were sunk into the bar.

Customers on the go could be served a quick snack.

The Villa of the Mysteries, outside the city walls,

embodies the wine's importance.

It is one of the biggest villas in Pompeii.

Built in the first century before Christ, it contains around 90 rooms.

The wealth of the former owners is mirrored in the ornate frescoes.

Romans had an army of hospitality slaves available.

Ersilia meets the German archaeologist Pia Kastenmeier

who has dedicated her life as a researcher to Pompeii and the Vesuvius region.

The big wall fresco in the triclinium shows mythological scenes.

This dining room was used by the Roman elite for lavish celebrations,

where good wine was a staple--

which was produced a few rooms further down, right in the Villa of Mysteries.

In particular in the Vesuvius region, in Pompeii's hinterland,

almost all villas have this combination

of production facilities and luxurious quarters,

that were mostly polished up for the owner,

but also the other part, for the production-- where slaves,

employees, and free farmers could work.

Here in the Villa of the Mysteries

the luxurious part is particularly beautiful.

Elaborate frescoes were the affluent owners' pride and joy,

because colored frescoes were seen as a status symbol in the ancient Rome.

White walls, in turn, were a sign of poverty.

Frescoes convey messages and tell stories.

Often, the adventures of the heroes of the ancient world,

or scenes from divine myths are depicted.

Then and now, owners and their guests are entertained by the mythological motifs,

and encouraged to strike up conversations.

The motifs weren't chosen by chance.

There was a pictorial program.

The frescoes of the Villa also point to the importance of wine and Dionysus.

In this central picture, the God Dionysus is shown.

Dionysus is the God of wine,

and in the Vesuvius region

he was one of the significant Gods, because of what he made.

Even in the small villae rusticae

that have less luxury to show for themselves,

you'll often find Dionysus frescoes,

installed exactly in the room

where the wine, or rather--

where the grapes are transformed into must.

So he's the divine protector of the wine industry.

In the Villa, living areas with Dionysian frescoes are on the west side.

The owners wanted to have a sea view.

The kitchens and utility rooms are in the south and the east,

in the north the areas for slaves

and storage space for produce.

In the work area,

20th century archaeologists found a large wine press.

Grapes were thrown into a wooden container,

then the grapes were pressed by turning its levers.

The juice ran into the large tub

and from there via canals into the iconic large terracotta jars

called dolum.

In order to prevent temperature changes they're sunk into the floor,

giving the wine ideal conditions to mature.

However, the wine industry was already in the process of shifting.

There was strong competition,

particularly from Gaul and Spain.

There, high quality wine was produced

at lower prices.

The eruption in 79 AD

destroyed the whole system completely.

The destruction of the city amounted to the destruction of the brain

that coordinated production and distribution.

Generally, wine was grown outside of the city walls.

However, old vines were also found near the inner-city amphitheater.

Because of its volcanic origins, the soil was fertile.

The river Sarno irrigated the plains around Pompeii.

Ancient roots can still be detected in the ground.

The Romans were drinking a wine completely different to ours today.

The taste of ancient Romans

was markedly different from what we eat and drink today.

The Romans didn't only appreciate different grape varieties,

but also produced wines to match the occasion.

ARCHAEOLOGIST

There were lighter wines, stronger ones, younger ones.

Wines of up to 15 years of age.

And also wine for slaves, produced from various grapes preserved in water.

They provided calories and energy,

but didn't have the same taste as wine.

Here we've produced mulsum.

Mulsum is an aperitif wine crafted from must and honey,

with one part honey and four parts must.

It's sealed in a container and ferments for a month.

Then you can drink it.

Let's see how it turned out.

-Cheers. -Cheers.

Well, it's really sweet, unfamiliar and very sweet.

-Maybe too sweet for our taste. -Too sweet.

I also taste alcohol,

but I understand why the Romans liked it.

-Sure, it's tasty, somehow. -With a starter.

We could serve it with a starter.

Not only was wine grown in the region,

but also fruit, grain, and olive oil were important agricultural produce

that enriched the region before and after the catastrophe.

Findings from excavations in Pompeii show

the volcano not only destroyed life, but it also gave life,

by making the soil incredibly fertile.

A lab stores organic finds from Pompeii.

Here, Ersilia meets Antonio Stampone.

The finds are special because they explain to us everyday life from 2,000 years ago.

It's nice to marvel at the ancient city and the frescoes in the houses,

but it's also interesting to see

what the people really produced, what they ate.

And compared to today, there hasn't been a significant change.

Exactly, a direct insight on their day-to-day.

This is 2,000 years ago.

We've got figs.

We've got dates.

-Imported, of course. -They're not local produce.

It tells us about the trade connections to other countries.

Sure, but also the wealth of the city.

Yes.

We've got almonds.

Wheat.

Spelt.

Broad beans, plums.

So there was a wealth of produce, just like today,

because the Sarno Valley is very fertile.

Yes, and that's another fruit typical for our region. Pomegranate.

This is the famous garum,

the fish sauce the Romans were crazy about.

It was produced exclusively from oily Mediterranean fish.

Anchovies,

mackerels, sardines.

They were dried in the sun, resulting in a sort of pulp.

The Romans were used to strong seasoning,

intended to cover up certain flavor components.

They didn't have any preservatives, only salt and honey.

So foods were bound to go bad.

And that is, let's say,

an enhancement of garum,

the famous liquid anchovy sauce from Cetara.

It's also a pretty strong taste,

and also a culinary highlight of Campania--

and it's still being used--

it is the liquid the anchovies give off

when preserved in salt.

The smell really is extreme, but I know it's a delicacy of Campanian

or even global cuisine.

Even though the smell... Well...

-It's a bit extreme. -A little extreme.

The organic day-to-day finds being examined here in the lab

raised another important question.

Is 79 AD the correct year, after centuries of being taken as certain?

In his letter, Pliny writes,

"the catastrophe occurred on August 24",

but why did the excavators find chestnuts, pomegranates and other autumn fruits?

The latest excavations in Pompeii

brought to light a spectacular find

that could answer this question once and for all.

In 2018, archaeologists uncovered a house

that was being renovated when Vesuvius erupted.

A note on the wall

would have been written only days before the catastrophe.

Something extraordinary came to light here.

This inscription was probably written by a slave,

maybe as part of the family that lived in this house.

It was some sort of reminder.

A note, it reveals something extraordinary,

a date: 16 K Nov,

meaning 16 days to the first day of November.

DIRECTOR ARCHAEOLOGY PARK POMPEII

And it goes on, "In olearia proma sum serunt",

and then it stops.

Something was taken to or from the storage.

We'll never know what.

But the when is interesting, because it happened on October 17,

many weeks after the alleged date of the eruption, August 24.

NAPLES - HERCULANEUM - POMPEII

During this eruption, the stone and rain of ash poured towards the South,

leaving Pompeii and Herculaneum buried,

and the coastline was moved towards the sea.

North of the volcano though, people and nature got away largely unscathed.

It was easy to fast-track a rebuild here.

Archaeologists found an ancient villa in this area several years ago.

It soon became clear that it was part of a huge site.

There were wild speculations about the owners.

In the villa of Somma Vesuviana, Ersilia meets excavation leader Antonio De Simone.

He knows why this, of all villas, is so extraordinary.

People thought that this was the villa of the Octavians

in which Emperor Augustus died.

When we started the excavations, there was nothing to see here, only grassland.

Then we discovered what we're seeing today.

And we realized that the villa probably has nothing to do with Augustus' villa.

ARCHAEOLOGIST

But it tells us something about what was happening in this region.

Above all, what happened in Campania after the year 79,

so after the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius

and until the Middle Ages.

So this is not the Villa of Augustus wasn't at all bad for research?

Well, we'd all be delighted to find the Villa of Augustus,

but what we see here is a building from the second century AD.

Changes happened gradually in the Roman Empire.

It slid into crisis and then perished with the death of Romulus Augustus.

In this last phase, the villa was restructured

and turned from a holiday villa more and more into a wine production site.

In the second century AD, people in Somma Vesuviana

were producing wine at industrial scale for the time.

This shows that the economy around Vesuvius

had fully recovered some decades after the catastrophe.

The soil had even become more fertile.

Archaeological finds show

that the presses squeezed out 100,000 liters of must per year.

They passed through a sophisticated system

of canals to ferment in the dolium that were buried in the ground.

The god Dionysus watched over winemaking in Somma Vesuviana, too.

Statues and frescoes attest to the fact that the economic wealth of the region

was used for the creation of works of art, too.

Clearly, only a part of this building has been excavated, it was much bigger.

The building could be as big as 20,000 square meters.

That kind of size is no surprise for villas

neither before the eruption nor after.

So far, we've only excavated 2,500 square meters.

That would be only a tenth of the suspected size.

Towards the end of the first century AD, Emperor Domitian made life difficult

for the vintners in Gaul and Spain,

to give the faltering wine industry in Campania a helping hand.

The vineyard in Somma Vesuviana is one of many examples for large wine production.

Researchers think there were other villas near here with the same function.

Ancient authors told of prospering landscapes after the eruption.

Cassius Dio is a historian

who lived roughly 120 years after the eruption,

in the late second and early third century AD.

He told about the Vesuvius eruption

and said that in his day, 120 years later,

there were plants and vines on the slopes of the mountain again.

So at that time the region experienced an economic boom again.

And Vesuvius itself contributed to this economic resurgence.

Because of the eruption of 79 AD, the soil became even more fertile.

That's how the volcano gave the region higher yields in the long term.

Our image of this eruption has been shaped by clichés.

Popular imagination has lava flowing down,

burying everything and everyone.

That's not how it was.

Pompeii was buried under six meters of ash that poured down.

Herculaneum was burnt down by pyroclastic flows

and swallowed up by a mudslide.

In order to assess the danger of the volcano properly,

Ersilia talks to volcanologist Mauro Di Vito.

She meets him on Vesuvius.

This volcano changes between short phases with strong eruptions,

and long resting periods in which it works slower.

A danger is on the one hand the very intensive eruptions,

on the other hand also

the fact that this region has been populated densely for millennia.

VOLCANOLOGIST

Catastrophes like the one in Pompeii therefore have occurred repeatedly.

As regards the devastating eruption in 79 AD,

what kind of scale are we talking in terms of danger and destruction?

In that context, I'd like to quote Pliny the Younger's letter.

He watched the eruption from 40 km away in Cape Miseno.

He described a huge cloud above the volcano, the famous pine,

with a height of 30 km. This cloud extends, becomes wider

and is driven on by the wind. Its rain carries pumice and ash.

This mass covers an area of thousands of square kilometers,

with devastating consequences.

But the most dangerous part is the ascent of the cloud.

If the cloud isn't stable, it collapses

and can generate pyroclastic flows.

Those are parts of this cloud, gases and scorching hot particles,

which, at high speeds,

plunge down the slopes of the volcano like a hurricane.

We call that velocity pressure.

It's virtually impossible to survive that.

Just a dangerous as the pyroclastic flows are the resulting cracks in the volcano

after emptying its magma chamber.

Those cracks can let in water into the volcano.

The water doesn't cool down the magma though,

it rather increases its explosiveness.

So there's basically no chance to escape after an eruption like that in 79 AD?

Unless there's an evacuation plan, but the Romans didn't have one, of course.

Not only the Romans didn't have one.

The people in 1631 had none either,

when at least 5,000 people died after an eruption.

And maybe that was the moment when it was decided to monitor the volcano.

In 1841, the first volcanological institute...

ROYAL VESUVIAN OBSERVATORY

...worldwide was founded near Vesuvius.

King Ferdinand II of Naples wanted to offer

his subjects the kind of protection that their ancient ancestors didn't have.

He fostered science and the construction of instruments

that could predict an eruption of the only seemingly peaceful volcano early enough.

A catastrophe like the one of 79 AD,

that took so many lives and required tremendous reconstruction efforts

shall not repeat itself.

The first mechanical instruments for measuring earth movements were developed.

The beginning of modern seismography.

But even the best monitoring technique doesn't provide 100% security.

The region's main problem is its population density.

More than three million people live in Greater Naples today.

It's roughly ten times as densely populated as other regions in Italy.

VESUVIUS

Vesuvius isn't the only uncertainty factor in the region.

The island of Ischia is a volcanic remnant, too.

Almost half of the city of Naples has been built into the crater of a huge volcano,

the Phlegraean Fields.

Amidst the Phlegraean Fields is the modern observatory,

monitoring all volcanic activity in the Gulf of Naples.

Dozens of screens show the volcanologists earth movements and temperature charts

that provide data on the volcanoes' activities.

Today, an eruption can be predicted roughly a month in advance.

The people of Pompeii could have been warned by the multiple earthquakes

that had beset the region since the year 62 AD.

But unaware of the fact

that the activity was triggered by Vesuvius, and heralded a catastrophe

the eruption took them by surprise.

Some people must have managed to escape.

Many fled to the shore in the hope of being rescued by boats,

and some were,

but many others weren't.

They died.

Suffocated.

By all the ash that came pouring down.

Pliny the Younger, in his report on the eruption,

told of his uncle, Pliny the Elder,

who commanded a fleet--

"It was probably sent down by Emperor Titus to save the people.

This rescue effort shows that Titus reacted quickly.

The people sensed that the region was somewhat eerie.

Stuff of legends.

The Roman poet Virgil believed the entrance to the underworld

to be in Lago d'Averno, a crater lake in the Gulf of Naples.

According to ancient myth, menacing giants

lived in the craters of the Phlegraean Fields.

Sulfurous vapors brought oracle priestesses and priests into ecstasy.

The landscape has also changed over time.

Vesuvius now has two summits,

before the eruption in 79 AD, it had only one.

Treasures that were buried under the debris and ash of Mount Vesuvius

are now kept safe in Naples' National Museum of Archaeology,

among them a prized treasure from the House of Menander.

A complete dinner service, consisting of 118 silver pieces, weighing 24 kg.

The cups, plates, and bowls are ornately decorated with animal heads

or olive leaves,

but also with mythological scenes about Hercules or Dionysus.

The owners of the house were rich Roman patricians with close ties to the emperor.

Quintus Pompeius was related to Nero's second wife.

The silver treasure was excavated in the basement of the house in 1930.

The wealthy owners probably hid it away there.

As they used to spend most of their time in the capital

they wanted to keep their riches safe during their absence.

Other basement finds included a chest

with gold and silver coins and a jewelry casket.

Another find, though, is more interesting for life after the catastrophe.

Several corpses were found here.

It's peculiar that next to them,

tools like spades and a lantern were found,

ideally suited for a break-in.

We can assume that they returned right after the catastrophe to rob the houses.

The thieves had a good instinct

as the House of the Menander was one of the richest in Pompeii.

It comprised 1,830 square meters

and was embellished elaborately with artistic frescoes and mosaics.

It was built under Greek reign in the third century BC,

before Romans were able to gain a foothold here.

The thieves knew the area well,

aware which house would offer plenty of booty.

They were perfectly organized.

On the wall of one house a graffito was found

that says "already robbed, we were here already".

After the eruption, robbery and looting were on the rise in the Vesuvius Valley.

The looters enriched themselves in the abandoned villas and cities.

The houses of the rich in Pompeii became their prime target.

The House of Menander, for example, stretched over nearly a whole block.

Clearly, a robbery would be worth it here.

The thieves weren't only looking for gold and silver,

but also for valuable statues, frescoes and marble pillars.

The riches of Pompeii, the decorations, the interior,

have surely always been an invitation for thieves, in ancient days and now.

Illegal excavations are still a plague now

so that authorities keep having to fight it.

In order to combat these robbers, the authorities set up a special unit.

There have always been particularly many illegal excavations around Vesuvius.

The excavation site in Pompeii is fully monitored,

but the surrounding area is too big to keep an eye on it all.

Opportunity knocks for pottery diggers.

In Civita Giuliana, the carabinieri found a massive illegal excavation.

In the beginning of the 20th century, archaeologists found ancient remnants,

but stopped excavating soon after.

The results were even published in 1994.

Did the thieves take note of the site because of that?

As the investigative authority, we knew of the robbers' activity here for years.

Hence, we asked the Council of Antiquities

to carry out emergency excavations.

PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OF TORRE ANNUNZIATA

Those excavations didn't only give us important scientific, historic,

cultural, and archaeological insights,

but also helped the investigators

to find clues for identifying the culprits.

The investigators do not know, however, what exactly the thieves took.

Colored breaking edges suggest that the walls were decorated with frescoes.

There must have been furniture in the villa, too.

Whatever isn't sold off is often destroyed in amateur excavations.

In order to prevent the worst, archaeologists are called to the rescue.

They find a house altar from times before the eruption

as well as a tomb from the century after it.

The involvement of professional archaeologists in the summer of 2017

fortunately rescued many treasures.

Of course, they don't use the door, but drill through the walls

to get from one room to another, destroying ancient items in the process.

Luckily, their tunnel went through the stone only on one side

so that the horses weren't harmed.

DIRECTOR GENERAL OF THE POMPEII ARCHAEOLOGICAL PARK

Those were breeding horses that were probably used for parades,

for military activities for representation purposes.

It's unique that they were in full gear when the volcano erupted.

Were the horses to be used to flee,

along with a cart of the residents' belongings?

We only know that flight

offered the only chance of survival in the face of the devastating eruption.

They tried to rescue as many people as possible, of course,

and probably take them to Naples

where there used to be a district called Herculanese,

suggesting they were resettled there.

Inscriptions also tell us

that further survivors went to other provinces in Italy.

After the catastrophe in 79 AD,

the region took several decades to recover.

Thanks to Titus' decisive intervention the crisis was overcome,

and life could start anew.

But as cities, Pompeii and Herculaneum were lost forever.

Yet they live on as tourist hot spots or archaeological research sites.

Architectural historian Gabriella Cianciolo

has focused her research on Pompeii's afterlife in our modern cities.

Ersilia wants to know from her where we encounter Pompeii today in our lives.

Pompeii is everywhere.

Not only here in Naples, because we're nearby, but in all of Europe.

We encounter it in different forms, from porcelain to urban planning.

This, for example, is a building

that we'd never associate with Pompeii.

It's iron architecture that we associate with modernity, not with Pompeii.

But these shapes, too, conceal Pompeii. How?

19th century architects

who had new materials like iron and cast iron at their disposal

found a perfect model in the Pompeiian murals.

ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN

The thin, airy, intricate shapes

remind us exactly of Pompeii's paintings.

19th century architects read the Pompeii frescoes

like architectural drawings.

There are no models yet for the new material at their disposal.

Hence, they're inspired by the Pompeiian paintings

and turn into real architecture what were only ancient figments of the imagination.

Iron buildings are characteristic for many modern cities the world over.

Buildings from the 19th century like libraries, markets,

this bandstand here

became a successful architectural model in France, Denmark,

England, and Italy.

Hence, centuries after the end of Pompeii

the fantastic architecture in the frescoes became real.

In ancient time, it wasn't practical or feasible and was seen only as decoration.

Gottfried Semper said,

"The murals of Pompeii show that the Romans used iron and wood."

According to him, the paintings were real architectural models.

Pompeii lives on in the cities of today,

particularly in people's minds.

The city has become the epitome of Ancient Rome.

But Pompeii also tells a story of great modernity.

Titus reacted to the devastating catastrophe in 79 AD

like a crisis manager of today

and immediately coordinated a rescue mission

that ensured a new livelihood for the survivors

and facilitated the economic restart in the region.

The Roman Emperor created the foundations for a prosperous Vesuvius region

that continues to flourish today.