Before 24 August, AD 79

Wealthy, full of life.

Renowned, crowded with people, business dealers and pleasure seeking. Pious with its numerous and various temples dedicated to the Capitoline triad of deities: Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, then to Venus, Apollo, Isis, Augusta Fortune, Hercules, and to the Lares, the guardian deities, who had saved the city during a terrible earthquake.

Refined in its luxury gardens and in its magnificent thermal baths.

Devoted to sport, proud of its huge palaestra and educated with its always packed theatres resounding poems and music.

Pompei was at the peak of its splendor with its 15,000 lively inhabitants.

An ancient city of Campania, Italy, 14 miles southeast of Naples, at the southeastern base of Mount Vesuvius. It was built on a spur formed by a prehistoric lave flow at the north of the mouth of Sarno river by Oscan-speaking descendants of the Neolithic aborigines. The volcano, once active, now since millennia was peacefully sleeping.

Strategically located, it soon came under the influence of the cultured Greeks, who had settled across the bay in the 8th century BC. Then it passed under the conquest and culture of the Etruscans and the Samnites. Having joined the Italians in their revolt against Rome, it was besieged and captured by the Romans. Latin replaced Oscan as the official language and the city became romanized in institutions, architecture and culture.

An earthquake in AD 62 did great damage to the city and it had not yet recovered from this catastrophe, when 17 years later the final destruction overcame it.