I visited Pompei just last week! What an amazing place. Most of the paintings and mosaics and other findings have been removed from the houses and are in a mus

I visited Pompei just last week! What an amazing place. Most of the paintings and mosaics and other findings have been removed from the houses and are in a museum in Naples, but still, it's extraordinary. There had been a big earthquake in 62 AD that had shaken the whole region, and Pompei was still under active reconstruction in 79 AD when the eruption buried it. (It is said that during the 62 earthquake, Nero was singing in Naples in front of 5000 people he had forced to come listen to him, and that when the earth trembled he explained it was because it was touched by his singing. Spectators were not allowed to leave the theater until he finished. The theater is no more, but the houses later built on top of it clearly follow its path https://goo.gl/maps/AsMRjEm9sj82 https://goo.gl/maps/AsMRjEm9sj82). In Pompei there were small houses, big houses (some over 3000 sq. m. with an entrance in the town, and a terrasse with a view of the sea); there was, at Herculanum, a nearby town, a huge villa (Villa of the Papyri: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_the_Papyri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_the_Papyri) overlooking the bay of Naples. None of that mattered. The eruption destroyed everything.