The first sign was smoke rising from the mountain and it was Pliny’s mother who noticed it. They didn’t know which mountain this cloud came from, Pliny the Younger says, but it rose in the air before spreading out like a pine tree. Pliny wrote two letters to his friend, the historian Tacitus. They are quietly devastating: my uncle died in a disaster that destroyed some of the most beautiful places there are.

The younger man lived to write about the eruption which would destroy whole towns in a day because he refused to join his uncle on a rescue boat heading towards Vesuvius. Pliny preferred to stay at home reading a history book. The story of Pompeii is full of such moments: lives preserved and destroyed, objects saved and lost, stories told or forgotten. And every new excavation produces more.