Recent excavations in the Insula Meridionalis area of Pompeii have revealed that the city, even after the massive destruction and ash burial resulting from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD, continued to be inhabited for centuries.
To be sure, the city never returned to its former state of prosperity and habitation after the eruption, but evidence now suggests that survivors who were without hope of starting new lives elsewhere, including individuals arriving from other areas of the country post-eruption, occupied areas within the destroyed city for lack of other reasonable alternatives. Archaeologists suggest that at least some of the new occupants may have been engaged in searching and digging for valuable objects abandoned by previous inhabitants, or perhaps by the previous occupants themselves, attempting to retrieve valued items from the ash and rubble remains of their homes. Archaeologists paint a picture of a precarious existence without infrastructure and services for these post-eruption inhabitants, who were far fewer in number than those who lived in the city prior to the eruption. This habitation persisted until the fifth century AD, when the area was completely abandoned after another eruption. Evidence suggests that people lived among the remains of the upper floors of structures that had partially re-emerged from the ash. The rooms that were on the ground floors of their homes were converted to cellars and spaces where hearths, ovens and mills were created.
Names of survivors can still be seen through inscriptions discovered in other towns in Campania, the present-day administrative region that includes Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other sites that were affected by the Vesuvius eruption.
Said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of the site, “the momentous eruption of the city in AD 79 has monopolized our memory. Amidst the enthusiasm of reaching the levels of AD 79, with remarkably well-preserved frescoes and furniture still intact, the fleeting traces of the re-occupation of the site were literally removed and often swept away without any records. As a result of the new excavations, the picture is becoming increasingly clear: a post-79 Pompeii is beginning to re-emerge. It was not so much a city as a precarious grey populated area, a kind of campsite with shacks sprouting up amongst the still recognizable ruins of the former city of Pompeii….”*
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*Pompeii was reoccupied after the destruction of AD 79: new traces of the building site of the Insula Meridionalis are coming to light, Pompeii Archaeological Park press release, 11 August, 2025.
Cover Image, Top Left: Pompeii street scene. Graham-H, Pixabay
