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Author: Zuchtriegel, Gabriel

Italy

Published on 22 May 2025 by Hodder & Stoughton (Hodder Press) in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 256 pages, 2 x colour plate sections
162 x 242 x 29 | 522g

‘The best book on Pompeii I’ve ever read’ STEPHEN FRY’Makes the familiar magical’ DAN SNOW’Brilliant’ TOM HOLLANDA vast area of Pompeii is being excavated for the first time, revealing astonishing insights into how people really lived. In this revelatory new history, Director of Pompeii Gabriel Zuchtriegel shares the untold stories that are at last emerging.

Pompeii is a world frozen in time. There are unmade beds, dishes left drying, tools abandoned by workmen, bodies embracing with love and fear. And alongside the remnants of everyday life, there are captivating works of art: lifelike portraits, exquisite frescos and mosaics, and the extraordinary sculpture of a sleeping boy, curled up under a blanket that’s too small.

The Buried City reconstructs the catastrophe that destroyed Pompeii on 24 August 79 CE, but it also offers a behind-the-scenes tour of the city as it was before: who lived here, what mattered to them, and what happened in their final hours. It offers us a vivid sense of Pompeii’s continuing relevance, and proves that ancient history is much closer to us than we think.