Discover the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, buried in volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted

NARRATOR: Vesuvius's earliest recorded eruption is now its most famous. In the year A.D. 79, with little or no warning, Vesuvius erupted and completely buried the ancient city of Pompeii. For two days the mountain shot volcanic material into the air, spreading a blanket of ash over the landscape. Pompeii, located seven kilometers from the volcano, was buried under five meters of ash. The devastation was so complete that it was not until sixteen hundred years later that the city was discovered. Evidence of the religion, culture, and everyday life of the Pompeiians, all abandoned in the sudden panic of the volcano's catastrophe, are remarkably well preserved. And everywhere there is the shadow of Vesuvius and reminders of its sudden and brutal eruption. Even the forms of the citizens remain. Their bodies, cast in plaster from the cavities they left in the volcano's ash, lie much as they did on the day of their death almost twenty centuries ago.