The Last XXIV Hours of Pompeii Retold on Twitter: Catastrophe Relived (Almost) Exactly 1,933 Years After Eruption of Vesuviusby
Damien Gayle
The final 24 hours of the Roman city of Pompeii are being relived on Twitter today - exactly 1,933 years after an eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried the city beneath a blanket of ash. The minute-by-minute reconstruction of the city's destruction is based on the tale of Pliny the Elder, the Roman scholar and admiral who took command of the city's evacuation. The city's cataclysmic final day will be retweeted as it happened from the Twitter account Elder_Pliny, who has been brought to life by experts from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Located near to modern day Naples in the Italian region of Campania, Pompeii was buried beneath 20ft of ash when Vesuvius erupted in 79AD. The city's destruction was total, and it remained lost for nearly
1700 years before it was rediscovered by archaeologists in 1748. Since then, it's painstaking excavation has offered historians detailed insights into life in the Roman Empire, frozen at that moment Pompeii was entombed by the volcano's eruption. The UNESCO World Heritage site has also become one of Italy's most popular tourist attractions, with some 2.5million visitors a year coming to soak up it's unique history. August 25, 2012
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