Today
two million people live in the immediate vicinity of
Mount Vesuvius.
This mountain has erupted more than 50
times since the eruption in 79 A.D., when it buried
Pompeii and its sister city, Herculaneum.
After Pompeii
was buried and lost to history, the volcano continued to
erupt every 100 years until about 1037 A.D., when it
entered a 600-year period of quiescence.
In 1631, the volcano killed an additional 4000
unsuspecting inhabitants.
It was during the restoration after this eruption
that workers discovered the ruins of Pompeii, buried and forgotten for
nearly 1600 years.
It would take another 300 years for the excavations to
reveal the story of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
The picture above shows Mount Vesuvius as seen from
the recently excavated ruins of Pompeii.
Vesuvius is about 5 miles away.
Try to imagine huge, billowing,
gray-black clouds like those at Mount St. Helens rushing
toward you at a hundred miles an hour.
That is probably what the ancient Romans saw just before they were entombed by hot ash.
The picture on the left is a satellite radar image of Mount
Vesuvius and its surroundings.
Vesuvius is the purplish cone near the center of the image with a prominent
summit crater and radiating greenish lava flows.
This is not a true color image. Vesuvius stands in the middle of
a much larger and older eroded cone called Mount Somma,
about half of which is still visible around the east
side of Vesuvius.
The rectangular docks of the port of
Naples are visible against the dark water to the upper
left of Vesuvius.
Mount Vesuvius
The picture on the left is a satellite radar image of Mount
Vesuvius and its surroundings. 
