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August 24, 2025

Anna Murray 

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, about 2,000 people were trapped in the Roman city of Pompeii. According to a recent study published in the journal Scavi di Pompei, some citizens who could not afford to relocate may have returned to live among the city’s ruins.

Most of Pompeii’s residents managed to escape the disaster. “A post-79 Pompeii is beginning to re-emerge,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, in a statement issued on August 13.Researchers suggest that some visitors who came to recover valuable artifacts may have joined those original residents. For nearly 400 years, communities lived amid the debris until the site was finally abandoned in the fifth century.