The Archaeological Park of Pompeii announced on Wednesday, Aug. 6, that new excavations clarified the long-debated “return to Pompeii” theory and confirmed that survivors reoccupied the devastated city after the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Fresh trenches revealed an improvised settlement that persisted inside the ruined walls until at least the fifth century CE, overturning the belief that the site lay deserted.
Archaeologists said that former residents who lacked the means to rebuild elsewhere returned to the rubble, joined by newcomers who hoped to find valuables buried beneath the ash. The upper stories of damaged houses were re-inhabited, while the buried ground floors became cellars fitted with ovens and mills. Inhabitants lived without the water, sewage, or trade infrastructure typical of a Roman city, and ash-filled rooms served as storerooms.
“A precarious conglomerate, a kind of camp or favela among the still recognizable ruins,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park. He added that the dominant narrative of total destruction erased this quieter chapter because “the faint traces of the site’s reoccupation were literally removed and often swept away without any documentation.”
Archaeological material showed that people erected makeshift dwellings amid toppled columns and cracked frescoes and dug through collapsed rooms in search of jewelry, tools, and household objects, even at the risk of encountering decomposing bodies. Before the catastrophe, Pompeii housed about 20,000 people; an estimated 15 to 20 percent died when a cloud of gas and ash engulfed the city. Since excavations began in 1748, roughly 1,300 victims have been identified, and about one-third of the 22-hectare site remains buried.
Historical texts recalled that Emperor Titus dispatched two former consuls to supervise recovery, yet the effort faltered and Pompeii never regained its earlier vitality. A later eruption, the Pollena event, prompted final abandonment, though evidence showed that makeshift habitation continued until the fifth century CE.
“Judging by the archaeological data, it must have been a conglomerate where people lived in precarious conditions and without the infrastructures and services typical of a Roman city,” stated a note from the Archaeological Park.
Pompeii’s remains, rediscovered in the late sixteenth century and steadily uncovered over three centuries, offer an intimate view of Roman life. The UNESCO World Heritage Site is Italy’s second most-visited attraction after the Colosseum, drawing more than four million visitors in 2024, and the new findings may steer attention to patched-up rooftops, improvised ovens, and repurposed staircases that testify to the resilience—and poverty—of those who returned.
The preparation of this article relied on a news-analysis system.