Where was Pompeii and how many people died in the Mount Vesuvius eruption?
POMPEII was an ancient city in Italy destroyed by a catastrophic volcano eruption.
In 79 A.D. the volcano Mount Vesuvius erupted and completely buried the Roman city under a thick carpet of ash, killing Pompeii's population.
Where was Pompeii?
Pompeii was once a very prosperous ancient Roman city on the Gulf of Naples, in Italy's Campania region.
It was home to 11,000 people and boasted a complex water system, amphitheatre, gymnasium and even a port.
Today, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of Italy's most popular tourist attractions with around 2.5 million visitors a year.
How was Pompeii destroyed?
On August 4, in the year 79AD, Vesuvius erupted in one of the most violent volcanic eruptions in history.
It shot stone, ash and volcanic gases as high as 21 miles into the sky at tens of thousands of cubic metres every second.
The thermal energy released was said to be a hundred thousand times that of the nuclear blasts at Hiroshima-Nagasaki.
The city was preserved in volcanic debris for centuries until it was rediscovered in the late 16th century in an excavation led by Spanish military engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre.
Over the next 250 years, it was a hotbed of scientific activity, with researchers uncovering several intact buildings and even wall paintings.
To this day, scientists are finding cultural, architectural and human remains on the banks of Mount Vesuvius.
Excavations at thermal baths in Pompeii's ruins in February revealed the skeleton of a crouching child who perished in the 79AD eruption.
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How many people died when Mount Vesuvius erupted?
The volcanic debris as a result of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius turned people to ash where they stood.
Around 2,000 people are believed to have been killed in Pompeii, which had a population of 11,000 at the time.
Some people came back to the ash-covered city to look for loved ones with very little luck.