Digging Deeper into Pompeii’s Past

New research is uncovering the ancient city’s dynamic story from its origins to the eruption that buried it

The emperor Nero is thought to have visited the southern Italian city of Pompeii in A.D. 64, perhaps spending a few nights in the enormous villa his wife, Poppaea, owned in the nearby town of Oplontis. In the sixth century B.C., a fortified wall that would define the city for the next 600 years was constructed, its shape determined by the lava flow on which Pompeii sits. At locations across the city, in its temples, public baths, restaurants, gardens, houses, villas, and cemeteries, they are looking for elusive evidence of Pompeii’s earliest settlements, revising previously held theories about the age of the site, reexamining properties that were excavated centuries ago, and even searching for evidence of what may have become of those who survived the eruption.

Source: www.archaeology.org