Pompeii is a place with two histories. The first, the story of a bustling city, ended abruptly in AD 79 when the eruption of Vesuvius buried Pompeii in pumice and ash, and those who didn't flee were overwhelmed by a pyroclastic surge.
The second of the two histories began in 1748, when Spanish military engineer Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre (1702-80) first dug at a site known locally as La Cività – the town – a name suggesting a lingering folk memory of what lay beneath. Although part of the site had accidentally been unearthed during building work in the late 16 th century, it wasn't until