Archaeology & History

After the eruption, people came back to live in Pompeii's ruins

By T.K. Randall
August 7, 2025

Image: Temple of Apollo in Pompeii
Credit: Mark de Nijs / CC BY-SA 4.0 (adapted) Situated near modern-day Naples, Italy, the ancient Roman city of Pompeii was buried in ash and dust when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, resulting in the deaths of thousands of its inhabitants.

Today, the ruins remain an important archeological site due to the fact that the ash preserved everything and everyone that was unfortunate enough to be there at the time.

The people of the city can still be seen there now, frozen in time like statues, offering a unique glimpse into the daily lives of those who resided there as well as a grim reminder of what happened to them.

While it might seem as though Pompeii would have remained abandoned after what happened there, new research has revealed that this wasn't actually the case.It is now believed that some of the people who survived the eruption returned to the ruins afterward to continue their lives as part of an informal settlement that endured for 500 years.

As archaeological findings have indicated, however, it was very much a shadow of its former self.

In some cases, people lived in the upper floors of buildings that had been buried in ash.

"Thanks to the new excavations, the picture is now clearer: post-79 Pompeii reemerges, less as a city than as a precarious and grey agglomeration, a kind of camp, a favela among the still-recognizable ruins of the Pompeii that once was," said site director Gabriel Zuchtriegel.

Source: BBC News

Tags: Pompeii