Pompeii is the Roman city near Naples buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, and this walking tour goes from its Amphitheatre and the Forum's Temple of Apollo to the House of the Faun, the Lupanar and the Garden of the Fugitives.
The route covers the town in its last years: a brawl in the arena in AD 59, the earthquake of 62, a rebuilt town, and the two days of the eruption itself. All six places can be visited today inside the Pompeii archaeological park.
In AD 79 a mountain above the Bay of Naples blew apart. Pliny the Younger watched from Misenum across the water, lost his uncle, the admiral Pliny the Elder, to the eruption, and years later described it for the historian Tacitus in two letters: the only eyewitness account that survives.
The route follows the eruption in the order of its events, from the mountain's first column to Pompeii, Herculaneum, the beach at Stabiae and back to Misenum. Pliny's letters never mention Pompeii or Herculaneum, so those stops come from archaeology. The traditional date is 24 August, but newer evidence points to the autumn.
