Pompeii

Pompeii was a Roman city near modern-day Naples in Italy. Both Pompeii and the nearby city of Herculaneum suffered a massive tragedy. Both cities were completely destroyed by the eruption of mount Vesuvius and were covered in thirteen feet of ash.

Pompeii was a sort of vacation home for the rich people. It was filled with a very immoral culture. The eruption was very likely God’s judgment on these people. The city housed about twenty thousand people and about two thousand of these were killed by the eruption.

The eruption caused a heat of about four hundred and eighty two degrees that killed anything within six miles. An ash covered the sky for three days after the eruption. After it cleared it left the tallest building completely buried in thirteen feet of ashes. A man named Pliny the younger saw the whole thing from the waters and wrote about it.

The city was forgotten after the eruption. Nobody would return to the place after what had happened. In 1863 Giuseppe Fiorelli excavated the site. He managed to well preserve many artifacts including body shapes using plaster. Later he learned resin was more efficient.

Pompeii in a way was like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible. The immoral state of the whole city ended with complete destruction by fire.