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The fertile coastal region of south-western Italy around the Bay of Naples in which Pompeii and Herculaneum sat. Its volcanic soils, mild climate, good harbours and position on trade routes made it agriculturally rich (grain, olives, vines, fruit, wool) and attractive to wealthy Romans, who built luxury villas along the coast. Roman writers called it 'Campania Felix' — fortunate Campania.

Volcanic ash and lava weathered into extremely fertile soil, producing high-yield vineyards and orchards, while the bay gave harbours and trade. The same volcanism produced the AD 62 earthquake and the AD 79 eruption. Ancient writers such as Strabo recognised Vesuvius as volcanic in origin, but the mountain had been quiet long enough that its slopes were farmed and settled right up to AD 79.

The opening phase, named after Pliny the Younger's description: a sustained eruption column of gas, pumice and ash rising an estimated 30 km, which he compared to an umbrella pine. Prevailing winds carried the fallout south-east, burying Pompeii in pumice and lapilli at a rate that collapsed roofs and killed people by roof-fall and by suffocation, while Herculaneum, upwind, received very little pumice.

The second phase, when the eruption column collapsed and generated a series of pyroclastic surges and flows — fast, ground-hugging clouds of superheated gas, ash and rock. Volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson's reconstruction identifies six surge events; the earliest reached Herculaneum and destroyed it, while later ones swept over Pompeii's walls and killed those still sheltering there.

Pompeii was buried under roughly 4-6 m of pumice, lapilli and ash, most of it fallout. Herculaneum was buried under some 20 m or more of surge and flow material that set hard. The difference explains the different evidence: Pompeii yields cavities left by decayed bodies and a wide horizontal spread of a large town; Herculaneum yields carbonised wood, food, textiles and papyri, upper storeys and skeletons.

The manuscripts of Pliny's letter give 24 August, and this was long accepted. Against it: autumn produce (pomegranates, walnuts, dried figs), braziers set up in rooms, heavier clothing on victims, and coin and inscription evidence, including a charcoal graffito found in Regio V in 2018 dated to a day equivalent to 17 October. Most current scholarship favours an autumn date, usually October or November AD 79.

The letter to Tacitus describing the death of Pliny the Elder: the sighting of the cloud from Misenum, the elder Pliny's departure by ship (part rescue mission, part scientific curiosity), his stay at Stabiae, the falling pumice, and his death on the shore, attributed by his nephew to fumes. It is the fullest ancient narrative of the eruption's first day.

He was about 17 and roughly 30 km away at Misenum; he never saw Pompeii or Herculaneum during the eruption. He wrote about 25 years later at Tacitus's request, in a self-consciously literary style, shaping his uncle as a Stoic hero and himself as a calm student. He gives no death toll and no account of the surges that killed most victims. His value is greatest for the eruption's sequence, which volcanology has largely confirmed.

Charles III of Bourbon sponsored tunnelling at Herculaneum from 1738 and the first digging at Pompeii from 1748. The aim was to supply the royal collection with statues, bronzes and wall paintings, which were cut out of walls; unwanted areas were backfilled. Finds were published slowly and access restricted. The excavations produced spectacular objects but very poor records of context.

Director at Pompeii from 1860. He shifted the work from treasure-hunting to systematic archaeology: excavating from the top of the deposit downwards rather than tunnelling in, leaving finds and structures in place, keeping a published excavation journal, training excavators, and dividing the site into numbered regions, insulae and doorways. He also devised the plaster-cast technique.

Bodies buried in ash decayed, leaving voids in the hardened deposit that retained the shape of the body, clothing and hair. From 1863 Fiorelli had liquid plaster poured into such voids and the surrounding material chipped away, producing a cast of the victim at the moment of death. The technique was later applied to organic remains such as doors, furniture and tree roots.

The priority shifted from opening new ground to conserving and studying what is already exposed. Excavation is now targeted, interdisciplinary and fully documented — with stratigraphic recording, environmental sampling, geophysics, photogrammetry and 3D laser scanning — and specialists in bone, pollen, plaster and DNA work alongside archaeologists. Areas are also deliberately left unexcavated for future techniques.

Roughly two-thirds of Pompeii's 66 walled hectares is uncovered; at Herculaneum only a few hectares are open because the modern town of Ercolano sits directly above the rest. Any generalisation about either city is therefore based on a partial and non-random sample — and at Herculaneum on a small one — which is a standard limitation to state in source-based answers.

Street surfaces show cart-rut wear, indicating traffic volume and one-way or blocked routes; raised stepping stones show pedestrians crossed above water and waste; kerbs, fountains at intersections, shop counters, doorway thresholds with sliding-shutter grooves and painted notices show how commerce and public life spilled onto the street. They give evidence about ordinary people that elite houses do not.

The rectangular, colonnaded open space at the civic heart of the town, closed to wheeled traffic. Around it stood the Temple of Jupiter (Capitolium), the Temple of Apollo, the basilica, the macellum, the Building of Eumachia, the comitium and the offices of the magistrates and decurions. It combined religious, political, judicial and commercial functions in one space, and was still under repair in AD 79.

Built about 70 BC by the magistrates Quinctius Valgus and Marcus Porcius, who called it a spectacula; it is the earliest surviving stone amphitheatre in the Roman world, seating in the order of 20,000 — more than the town's population, so it drew spectators from surrounding towns. Painted notices advertise gladiatorial munera, awnings and sprinkled water.

The Stabian Baths (the oldest), the Forum Baths, the unfinished Central Baths and the Suburban Baths near the Marine Gate. A bathhouse typically had an apodyterium (changing room), frigidarium (cold), tepidarium (warm) and caldarium (hot), often with separate men's and women's sections and an attached palaestra. Bathing was cheap, daily and social, not merely hygienic.

Entry through the fauces into the atrium, whose roof opening (compluvium) shed rainwater into a basin (impluvium) feeding a cistern; small rooms (cubicula) and side recesses (alae) opened off it; the tablinum, where the owner received clients, sat opposite the door; beyond lay the peristyle garden with triclinia (dining rooms), kitchen and service rooms. Shops often occupied the street frontage.

One of the largest houses at Pompeii, occupying most of an insula, with two atria, two peristyles and Hellenistic-style decoration including the bronze dancing faun and the Alexander Mosaic. Its scale and Greek-influenced luxury make it the standard example of elite display and of Pompeii's wealth in the late second and first centuries BC.

A vast seafront villa at Herculaneum, explored by Bourbon tunnels under Karl Weber and only partly re-excavated. It produced a major collection of bronze and marble sculpture and a library of around a thousand carbonised papyrus rolls, largely Greek Epicurean philosophy including works of Philodemus — the only library to survive from the ancient world in its original setting.