Pompeii was one of the places that I wanted to visit. Something about a town frozen in time is intriguing (okay -- 'frozen' may not be the best word).

The entire city was burried. Everything. When you see the height of some of the structures below, you have to wonder how many truckloads of ash were removed. The restoration has been going on since the 1800s.

Pompeii was not just a town -- it was a city. It had an arena, theater, and plumbing. As you walk down street after street, you are hit by the scope of this disaster.

Experts believe that most the people died in an instant. They even found some people in their beds apparently asleep.

	To help put all of this in perpective... The ash fell so quickly that people were instantly burried in the ash. Eventually their bodies decayed. A brilliant archiologist had the idea of drilling a hole into these openings and then pouring in plaster. This is a boy in his last seconds of life.
This was a girl in the position she died in.
	This was a set of pillars lining the main square. At the head of the square was a temple to Saturn (the God, not the car). Keep in mind that this was dug out from under ash.
This was the courtyard in the house of two brothers. Each brother had a metal box outside their bedroom doors with effects that are priceless in understanding Pompeii at the time the volcano erupted.
This was one of the streets in Pompeii. People would usually walk down the middle but after rain, this was used for drainage so people walked on the sidewalks. To the left were individual houses (or were they townhomes?).