Pompeii. Pompeii was an ancient Roman city located in the modern comune of Pompei near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area, was buried under 4 to 6 m of volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Largely preserved under the ash, the excavated city offers a unique snapshot of Roman life, frozen at the moment it was buried and providing an extraordinarily detailed insight into the everyday life of its inhabitants. It was a wealthy town, enjoying many fine public buildings and luxurious private houses with lavish decorations, furnishings and works of art which were the main attractions for the early excavators. Organic remains, including wooden objects and human bodies, were entombed in the ash and decayed leavingvoids which archaeologists found could be used as moulds to make plaster casts of unique and often gruesome figures in their final moments of life. The numerous graffiti carved on the walls and inside rooms provide a wealth of examples of the largely lost Vulgar Latin spoken colloquially at the time, contrasting with the formal language of the classical writers. Pompeii is a UNESCO World Heritage Site status and is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Italy, with approximately 2.5 million visitors annually. After many excavations prior to 1960 that had uncovered most of the city but left it in decay, further major excavations were banned and instead they were limited to targeted, prioritised areas. In 2018, these led to new discoveries in some previously unexplored areas of the city. Pompeii in Latin is a second declension plural noun. According to Theodor Kraus, The root of the word Pompeii would appear to be the Oscan word for the number five, pompe, which suggests that either the community consisted of five hamlets or perhaps it was settled by a family group. Pompeii was built about 40 m above sea level on a lava plateau on the coast created by earlier eruptions of Mount Vesuvius. The plateau fell steeply to the south and partly the west. Three sheets of sediment from large landslides lie on top of the lava, perhaps triggered by extended rainfall. The city bordered the coastline, though today it is 700 metres away. The mouth of the navigable Sarno River, adjacent to the city, was protected by lagoons and served early Greek and Phoenician sailors as a safe haven and port which was developed further by the Romans. Pompeii covered a total of 64 to 67 hectares and was home to 11,000 to 11,500 people, based on household counts. The first stable settlements on the site date back to the 8th century BC when the Oscans, a people of central Italy, founded five villages in the area. With the arrival of the Greeks in Campania from around 740 BC, Pompeii entered the orbit of the Hellenic people and the most important building of this period is the Doric Temple, built away from the centre in what would later become the Triangular Forum. At the same time the cult of Apollo was introduced. Greek and Phoenician sailors used the location as a safe port. Around the 6th century BC, the settlement merged into a single community centred on the important crossroad between Cumae, Nola, and Stabiae and was surrounded by a tufa city wall. The first wall followed the same course as the later wall and, unusually, enclosed a much greater area than the early town to include agricultural land. It began to flourish and maritime trade started with the construction of a small port near the mouth of the river. The earliest settlement was focused in regions VII and VIII of the town as identified from stratigraphy below the Samnite and Roman buildings. In 524 BC the Etruscans arrived and settled in the area, including Pompeii, finding in the River Sarno a communication route between the sea and the interior. Like the Greeks, the Etruscans did not conquer the city militarily, but simply controlled it and Pompeii enjoyed a sort of autonomy. Nevertheless, Pompeii became a member of the Etruscan League of cities. Excavations in 1980-1981 have shown the presence of Etruscan inscriptions and a 6th-century BC necropolis. Under the Etruscans a primitive forum or simple market square was built, as well as the temple of Apollo, in both of which objects including fragments of bucchero were found by Maiuri. Several houses were built with the so-called Tuscan atrium, typical of this people. The city wall was strengthened in the early-5th century BC with two façades of relatively thin, vertically set, slabs of Sarno limestone some four metres apart filled with earth.