Pompeii Rediscovered

March 23, 1748

Bourbon workmen digging near Vesuvius, ten years after Herculaneum, struck the walls of Pompeii. Unlike its neighbor, Pompeii had been buried in ash and was far easier to excavate. Within a generation its frescoes, its bodies in the ash, and its erotica would transform European art, design, and imagination from Robert Adam to Winckelmann.