VESUVIUS AND THE LOST CITIES
Mount Vesuvius spent centuries being peacefully still before exploding with vigour in 79 CE. Towering 1,280 metres above the southern Italian cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, around midday on 24 August, Vesuvius showered these communities in hot rock and ash. Studies of the bones of Herculaneum residents suggest that the liquid in many of the victims’ bodies was boiled instantly upon contact with the volcano’s contents. For those in Pompeii who hadn’t fled by the next morning, a second release of gas and ash from the volcano swept into the city to claim their final breaths. Following this, a large flooding of volcanic mud and debris buried both Roman cities, only for them to be rediscovered during excavations throughout the 1900s.