This region is full of treasures of the past...
..waiting to be discovered.
Just 28 miles from Pompeii,
across the Bay of Naples,
are the sunken ruins of the Roman port of Misenum.
It was the main military harbour of the Roman Empire.
The basis of the biggest fleet of this time.
In AD 79, the Roman writer Pliny the Younger is here,
visiting his uncle,
the Admiral of the Fleet.
Pliny is just sitting on the terrace of his villa...
..when he noticed something strange and amazing.
A big cloud is exploding from the top of the Vesuvius...
..creating the shape of a very high pine tree.
Pliny records every detail as he watches the drama unfold.
Today, he lends his name to this deadly type of eruption.
He is witnessing the beginning of a Plinian eruption.
The most famous volcanic eruption of the history.
While Pliny watches from safety,
for the residents of Pompeii,
the eruption is a matter of life or death.
Within hours, thousands will perish as their city
is entombed in metres of ash.
Two millennia later, a team of archaeologists is
removing that volcanic debris.
This is the most ambitious dig in a generation.
The all-Italian team are excavating an entire new city block
on a wealthy commercial street,
as they look to write the next chapter of
the last moments of Pompeii.
In one corner, they have discovered what was once a commercial bakery.
In a small room they made a shocking discovery.
Buried under the debris were the crushed remains of
two women and a young child -
all killed by a collapsing ceiling.
IN ITALIAN
Next door, an internal courtyard connected the bakery to
the living quarters of a wealthy townhouse.
The lavish frescos include what looks like one of
the first-ever depictions of a pizza.
Now, the excavation continues.
What more can it reveal about those who lived and died
in the eruption of AD 79?
Led by archaeologist Gennaro Iovino,
the excavation has moved to the reception hall - or atrium -
right next to the bakery where the bodies were found.
Here, they discovered building materials and tools -
indicating that the whole building was under reconstruction
at the time of the eruption.
For 2,000 years,
this bronze harness lay where it was left.
Gennaro and his team now have evidence of builders and horses
on the site just before the eruption.
But, as they haven't found any more bodies, the question is,
what happened to them?
Could they have escaped the volcano and made it to safety?
It's hard to make decisions during volcanic eruptions,
whether to stay and guard your property,
and stay with your loved ones...
..or whether to flee.
Volcanologist Professor Chris Jackson believes
the Pompeiians would have had to act quickly
to stand a chance of survival.
Within the first hour to hour-and-a-half of the eruption,
the column grew from around 14km high
to about 22-23km high.
That's about twice the altitude at which a commercial aircraft flies.
The rising column driving everything up skyward
would have caused a zone of low pressure - meaning that
the air from the surrounding region was sucked in.
The weather was changed by this volcanic eruption.
The wind would've picked up as
the wind swept along these
narrow streets towards Vesuvius.
For people fleeing the city, racing down the streets,
behind them would have been chaos,
ash falling out of the sky.
We'd have seen lightning,
as electrically charged particles started to interact.
Imagine trying to run through metres of freshly fallen snow...
..with a horse or a cart,
or just carrying things in your hands,
panicking, as well, at the same time.
It would've been almost like the end of the world.
But at this moment, people in Pompeii would still
have had a chance to escape.
They'd have been disorientated, they'd have been scared -
but they would still have had a chance to exit the city
through one of the gates.
But any window that was open for the residents to leave...
..was rapidly slamming shut.
Experts have never known exactly how many people
lived in Pompeii in AD79,
but it is believed to be 10-12,000.
However, in 300 years of excavation,
archaeologists have only found just over 1,200 bodies.
So, did some of the residents escape the horror?
And if so, where did they go?
Scholars have long thought there must have been people
that made it out.
It's just that nobody ever went looking for them before.
Now, Professor Steven Tuck of Miami University
is attempting to trace survivors
in a pioneering new research project.
I always wondered, what happened afterwards?
What if people got out?
Where might they have gone?
What were their lives like?
There's just so many questions that spiral once you open up
the possibility that somebody got out.
For the last decade,
Steven has combed online databases of Roman inscriptions
looking for clues.
Now, he's come to Pompeii to try to prove his theory.
HE CHUCKLES
What an amazing find!
Look at the carving on this,
this is absolutely beautiful - and just in pristine condition.
His first stop is a newly discovered tomb on the edge of town.
This Latin inscription holds vital evidence that Steven believes
changes the thinking on how many people really lived in Pompeii.
So, this was found about four years ago.
You can still see, attached to the tomb,
the remains of the pumice and the eruption material.
While the owner's name is lost,
the inscription describes his life in detail.
The dinners he held, the giveaways of bread,
the gladiatorial games, the animal hunts he sponsored.
It's his entire life defined by his acts for the community.
Most intriguingly, the inscription reveals a lavish banquet he gave
for all the male citizens of Pompeii.
So, we've got 456 dining couches
with 15 men on each one.
Knowing that the benefactor hosted nearly 7,000 male guests,
Steven believes he can work out Pompeii's true population.
Every one of these guys has families and wives, and kids,
and enslaved people -
which means that there can't only be 10,000 people in the community.
We think that this indicates
probably a population of about 30,000.
This inscription triples what we think the populace of Pompeii was.
If 30,000 people lived in the city,
it means over 90% of Pompeiians are still missing.
People could have perished outside the city, on the roads,
or on the coast.
But, with this vast, much larger number,
there may have been thousands and thousands of people
that made it out from the city.
There's a lot more people missing than we were aware of.
And Steven believes a major clue as to where they went
is hiding in plain sight.
As you walk around the city of Pompeii,
there's some really intriguing evidence that I think of
as evidence from absence.
And one of those is right at your feet -
tracks in the road.
Many of the roads have these cart tracks in them,
indicating in the last years of the city, dozens,
perhaps hundreds of carts and wagons -
pulled by mules, donkeys, maybe even by slaves -
filled the streets of the city.
And then, when they excavated,
they found almost none of those.
Almost no carts, very few horses.
All of these are gone,
and they're not within the city limits -
indicating that perhaps people got out.
At the dig,
Gennaro and his team are still looking for the remains of a horse
that had once worn the brass harness.
While the horse may have escaped,
the team have found another animal.
Part of a highly decorated roof.
These lion heads are ornate gutters,
used to channel rainwater.
Archaeologist Ausilia Trapani
notices subtle differences in the design over time.
These lion-head gutters were an integral part of the atrium roof,
which was open in the middle.
When it rained, they funnelled water into a central tank
called an impluvium -
an ornate solution to a practical problem, designed to show off
the owner's wealth and status.
The more the team dig,
the clearer it becomes this building owner spared no expense
to decorate his atrium.
The solid marble table and other fittings all suggests to the team
that the owner of this property was a rich and influential Pompeiian.
Just behind the marble table,
in a room at the rear of the site,
the team turn their attention to the elaborately decorated walls.
Hidden under layers of hardened ash
is an ornate fresco.
After being buried for 2,000 years,
the exposed painting is vulnerable to the weather.
THUNDER ROLLS
Only after they have protected it from the rain,
can the team begin to restore it.
This is a scene from the Greek myth of Achilles,
the famous hero of the Trojan war.
The fresco depicts the moment Odysseus discovers Achilles
disguised as a woman.
The paintings had a social function in this society.
And you could show off your knowledge of Greek mythology.
The basic message is, you know, "I've made it.
"I'm part of this local elite, not only financially,
"but also culturally."
Gennaro thinks this room was the main office
from where the wholesale bakery was run.
Clients and guests would have been greeted first
by the impressive fresco...
..and then, by the manger sat behind his imposing marble table.
Meanwhile, the hunt continues for solid evidence that people
could have survived the eruption.
Professor Steven Tuck is joined by local Naples art historian
Ann Pizzorusso, to look for clues in one of Pompeii's storerooms.
Visiting the repository of objects in Pompeii is, I think,
a really important part of this research,
because it gives us the opportunity to analyse objects of daily life.
This is the sort of material that that doesn't normally survive,
and it enables us to really understand these people,
and to reflect on their lives.
So much bronze!
Any other museum in the world,
three of these would be all they would have.
SHE CHUCKLES
I know! Three of these.
Lead archaeologist Alessandro Russo
is showing Steven a collection of pots that once belonged to
a famous Pompeiian family.
Well, they may not look like much,
but these are incredibly interesting vessels.
They're plainware, but each of these is a vessel that held garum.
Garum was a popular Roman condiment
made from fermented fish.
Si legge, "Gari floss sgombri..."
So, "The flower of Garum", OK?
.."Sgombri"... ..of mackerel.
So, we know what it's made out of.
Crucially, the vessels don't just list the ingredients,
but also, who produced the garum.
"Scauri Ex Officina Scauri."
Scaurus.
And this is, erm, the third name of Aulus Umbricius Scaurus.
This is just amazing!
One third of all garum vessels found in and around Pompeii
bear his name.
Aulus Umbricius Scaurus is the most successful producer
of fish sauce in Pompeii.
Reading the names on it really takes it away from just
being another piece of pottery.
Suddenly, I identify with them as human beings,
and I think about - and I worry about, did they get out?
It's a rare name in the entire Roman world,
and that combination of first name - Aulus -
and family name - Umbricius -
is unique to Pompeii.
So, searching these databases of Roman inscriptions of Latin names,
I got a hit, and I found a name.
And, with Ann's help, tracked down this particular inscription
in a former factory that's now an office building.
Steven has come to Pozzuoli -
17 miles north-west of Pompeii.
Ta-da! Ah!
There we are.
"Aulus Umbricius".
This is the first time I've seen that name,
Aulus Umbricius, outside of Pompeii.
Although this isn't Scaurus' headstone,
it is his unique family name.
And Steven is convinced this inscription commemorates
a direct descendant.
"Umbricia Iusta, the daughter of
"A Umbricius Magnus".
So, this must be a son of Scaurus.
And so, she, the deceased, is the granddaughter.
Dating to about 20 years after the eruption,
Steven believes this headstone is proof that members
of Scaurus' family survived the disaster.
It says she lived a number of years,
15 - 15 years old. Huh.
Oh, that's kind of heartbreaking.
While Steven can't say for sure what happened to the girl's grandfather,
Scaurus, he's convinced that the location of this inscription
is a clue as to his fate.
In Roman times, Pozzuoli was called Puteoli -
and Aulus Umbricius Scaurus might have had good reason to be here
on the day of the eruption.
In Roman times, there were these regional markets that would occur
every eight days and in different locations.
Traders from neighbouring towns would gather to sell
a range of commodities -
wine, millstones, and food.
And, most interestingly,
a businessman wouldn't go by himself,
but take his entire household.
Following the traditional dating of the eruption,
Steven discovered that Puteoli might have hosted one of
the regional markets on the day of the disaster.
He believes traders from Pompeii could have been there -
safe from the volcanic fallout.
Scaurus might not have been at home in Pompeii,
but he and his family had been at Puteoli instead.
Steven's discovery reveals that some of Scaurus' family
probably did survive the eruption.
But the premature death of his 15-year-old granddaughter shows
that tragedy was never far away.
This is incredibly moving to me.
It gives me a great sense of connection to them as individuals
who have made it out from this tremendous tragedy,
and now have suffered more personal tragedy.
Meanwhile, in the atrium,
the team have cleared out all the pumice and volcanic material
in the impluvium -
an ornamental tank used to collect rainwater.
And they've discovered it has a remarkable plumbing system.
Further excavation has revealed something even more intriguing.
The evidence suggests that the bakery and wealthy residence
sourced their running water directly from the neighbouring building.
But what was the next-door building used for?
When it was partially excavated in the 19th century,
archaeologists found a deep basin
instead of the usual shallow impluvium -
leading some to conclude this was a specialised Roman laundry,
known as a fullery.
But Allesandro isn't convinced.
Working out if this was a fullery
will help the team discover more about the whole building complex.
So, Allesandro has asked Dr Miko Flohr -
a world expert in Roman fulleries - to take a look.
Just a few blocks south of the dig lies the Fullery of Stephanus,
one of the best-preserved examples in the world.
Pompeii is the only place where you will get the full picture
of the fulling process.
The fullery was the Roman equivalent of the dry-cleaner's.
It was here rich Pompeiians
brought their expensive clothes to be cleaned.
As a fuller, you need to have the technical capacities
to make sure that these garments stay as beautiful
as they used to be,
that the colours come out as bright as they were before.
To clean the clothes, fulleries used huge quantities of water
and highly toxic chemicals, including human urine.
Original Pompeiian frescoes -
now at the Naples Archaeological Museum -
reveal the process in fascinating detail.
In the fulling stalls, where they do the first phase,
where they stand with their feet in the chemicals
and do the treatment of the clothes.
In the second phase, you try to get rid of those chemicals.
So, you rinse and you make sure that everything is washed out,
the chemicals and the dirt.
The third phase requires the most skills.
Clothes are being finished -
and that means that their surface is being pressed.
It's being treated so that it becomes smooth,
and that makes the clothes quite warm and comfortable to wear.
Miko is meeting Alessandro at the building adjoining the dig site
to work out if this really was a fullery.
TRANSLATION:
Er...puzzling.
THEY CHUCKLE
I understand why you think this has something to do with the fulleries,
because there are clear parallels,
but having seen kind of the fulleries of the city,
this kind of looks, to me, as something really different.
It's clearly productive,
but we don't really know what's going on.
I think that's part of our fun, also.
So, my starting point was sceptic.
I came across a lot of places where people had found
two or three basins, and then they thought,
"This should be a fullery."
Oh, wait - may I comment on this?
Of course. Yes.
I think this is really fascinating.
This is where my fullery alarm bells start ringing a little bit.
They made a big drain that was coming right from there,
from the part that's not been excavated yet.
Very clearly, this was an enormous quantity of water.
This is not your normal drain.
This is a serious drain.
Yes.
If it uses these quantities of water...
..it can be a fullery.
With this drain closely resembling the one at the back of
the Fullery of Stephanus,
Miko believes that this could be a fullery.
It's a discovery that provides the team with valuable insights
into the complex's owner...
..as running this sort of high-class laundry
was a gateway to the upper ranks of Roman society.
The private clientele of fullers predominantly consisted of
people with above-average socioeconomic means.
It gave you a way into society that made it possible to participate.
Pompeii was a wealthy city.
It was also a sharply unequal city.
But it meant that life was relatively good
for fullers in Pompeii.
It seems the owner of this site was managing not one
but two successful businesses -
a laundry and a bakery -
linked by a sophisticated plumbing system.
But who was this entrepreneur?
Gennaro has found a compelling clue
at the base of this bakery millstone.
The team, having uncovered initials that could belong to the owner,
hope they can soon identify his full name.
Meanwhile, Steven is also searching for names -
to provide hard evidence that people survived the eruption.
He's focused on two successful wine merchants
who lived in this ornate Roman townhouse.
They're freed slaves.
They're essentially nouveau riche.
They become very wealthy and prominent only after
the earthquake of AD 62.
We know their family name - Vetti -
thanks to a personalised stamp
probably used to mark their possessions.
Aulus Vettius Restitutus and Aulus Vettius Conviva.
While this stamp is a reproduction,
archaeologists found the original in the Vettis' luxurious home.
These stamps are really important for identifying home ownership.
They're relatively valuable to an individual.
But in the greater sense,
in the running and screaming of an eruption,
they're the sort of thing that gets left behind as you're grabbing
your gold and your household gods, and so on. Right.
Steven's research has found an ancient Roman gravestone
that bears the Vetti name.
It's located 12 miles north of Pompeii,
in the backstreets of the small town of Nola.
Hunting for these inscriptions has been really an intriguing part
of the entire process.
So many of them are not in museums.
They're in sometimes curious, unexpected places.
OK. I know it's around here somewhere.
OK. Believe me. All right.
I know it's in a medical centre.
Here.
Here we go.
This inscription dates to roughly 20 years after the eruption.
Look at this.
BOTH: "Vettia Sabina."
"Vettia Sabina."
Telling us that members of the Vettius family survived.
And it gets better.
We see the name of her husband, Marcus Tullius Dionysus.
Dionysus - I like that name. Yes.
Another Pompeiian name with a completely different social profile.
So, he belongs to an old-money family
that had been prominent for decades.
And she belongs to a family which is, we would say,
nouveau riche, you know, recently wealthy.
It's...almost Jane Austen here.
So, I think this is a clear sign of survivor intermarriage. Right.
They get out and they intermarry.
The inscription tells Steven that Sabina and her husband
met as refugees in the years after the disaster.
But just as they were re-building their lives, tragedy struck.
And then, the final line, of course, is her age. OK.
She died at the age of 24... OK.
..three months and 22 days.
OK. So, yeah, she died, I would say, at 24, unexpectedly.
Pure speculation here.
What do you think? Childbirth?
Even the people that own this building
where the inscription is had no idea what it said
and certainly not what it meant.
My research, it's really about telling the stories,
not just the disaster or the destruction,
but about the survival, of the rebuilding of lives.
Steven's research is proving
for the first time that there was life after the eruption.
But to survive,
people would have had to overcome incredible odds.
Just fleeing the city would not have been enough.
The difference between life or death
was knowing which way to run.
So, as Vesuvius continued to erupt,
the residents here at Pompeii had decisions to make.
Many of them made what seemed like the logical choice at that time -
to go southwards towards the Bay of Naples,
towards the sea.
But that was the wrong choice...
..because the sea at that time was dangerous for two reasons.
One is it was coated in pumice,
and also, the wind was blowing onshore towards Vesuvius,
meaning it had been difficult to almost impossible
to sail away from trouble.
Counterintuitively, what they really needed to do
was head northwards, around the volcano, and then,
westwards towards Naples.
So, it's a cruel irony that our natural instinct, really,
is to head away from danger.
Steven believes the survivors who headed north
probably stayed in the area.
So, he and Ann follow the northern escape route to Naples.
Of course, return to Pompeii is impossible.
The city is levelled, it is destroyed.
The survivors from Pompeii aren't just that.
They aren't just survivors.
They're also refugees.
They need to settle somewhere.
In the area north of Vesuvius,
in the two decades after the eruption,
public infrastructure skyrockets.
All of this new infrastructure
really seems to give us great evidence for larger populations.
And that really, I think, opens up the possibility
that more people did survive.
To Steven, this building boom is evidence that a sudden influx
of refugees from Pompeii needed rehousing.
In the backstreets of Naples,
a little-known archaeological site offers another crucial clue.
Oh, wow! Wow!
I had no idea this existed.
Oh, this is just extraordinary.
Oh!
So, this is obviously a residential complex,
like an apartment house.
I see at least three, possibly four storeys tall.
You can see the concrete core and the brick on the outside.
That's wonderful, because it dates this right after the eruption.
You see this in the wall there? Oh, yes, look at...
Yeah, the terracotta drain.
So, that means they had water.
Hmm. OK. All right.
I sound like a real estate agent. SHE LAUGHS
"Fully decorated. Hot and cold running water.
"Well, probably not hot. Good views."
We can't know for sure who lived here.
But this is really suggestive of the sort of complex built for
the people that we do know survived Vesuvius,
and got out of Pompeii and moved to Naples.
Steven's investigation suggests
that it wasn't just a few wealthy individuals who survived
the eruption in AD 79,
but that a much larger number of people escaped Pompeii.
So many, in fact, that the Emperor Titus visited
to donate money to fund the new buildings.
This inscription celebrates his generosity.
We can see right there - "Titus Caesar".
He restored something that had collapsed.
It's right after the eruption. There we go! So...
I think it's the "your tax dollars at work here" sign.
Back at the dig, the team have made an exciting discovery...
..unearthing large fragments of a highly decorated fresco.
They believe it came from the upper floor of the building.
Like most houses in Pompeii, the upper floors collapsed
and were totally destroyed in the eruption.
Alessandro and Ausilia carefully reconstruct the beautiful fresco.
In the centre is an exotic religious ceremony
set in the Middle East.
The surprise here is that the artist didn't paint the fresco on a wall,
but directly onto a ceiling.
This kind of artistry far exceeds
anything else found in the dig so far.
And the team believe that only the super wealthy -
just the top 1% of Pompeii's population -
could have afforded this kind of painting.
Nine months into the dig,
the team are beginning to get a vivid picture of what life was like
in this building complex.
This richly decorated atrium
connected a commercial bakery - run by enslaved workers -
to the wealthy living quarters upstairs.
Next door, the same owner ran a specialised laundry
catering to an upscale clientele.
The team have found evidence that the eruption interrupted
major renovation work,
as builders were refurbishing the living area with
sculpted roof gutters,
highly decorated fresco walls,
and expensive marble furniture.
This is a place where rich and poor
were living and working cheek by jowl.
Several hours after the volcano had started to erupt,
the ash column had continued to grow.
And it's estimated that it reached about 32km into the air.
Eventually, in the middle of the night,
there was a change in the eruption behaviour.
There would have been a pause.
Ash was still falling, but maybe at a lower rate.
At that moment, people maybe thought that the eruption had finished.
The residents of Pompeii may have actually taken heart from that.
But what people did not know is that magma was no longer being taken
from the upper part of the magma chamber below Vesuvius...
..but from deeper depths, where there were less volatiles,
less water, less gas to drive the eruption.
This meant the volcano was unable to sustain
the eruption column any more.
The upward thrust of the volcano
wasn't enough to keep all of that material suspended.
And as that eruption column collapsed,
it formed something much more deadly than ash - pyroclastic flows.
For the people who'd made the decision to stay,
to hide indoors during the earliest phase of the eruption,
it was too late to exit the city itself...
..where people who maybe thought they'd escaped
the worst of the volcanic eruption were only then finding out
exactly how bad things were going to get.
Next time - as the eruption enters its deadliest phase,
the team uncover the last terrifying moments inside the building.
They discover, as hope faded,
residents desperately searched for salvation.
Some prayed to the gods.
Others were just lost in this darkness and hopelessness.
And they uncover a whole new world of wealth.
Would you like to explore Pompeii for yourself?
Follow the links to the Open University,
where you can embark on an interactive walkthrough
of the ancient city. To find it, just go to...
..and click on the link to the Open University.