How was Pompeii accidently discovered in 1748 and by whom?

Question

After Italy's Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii, the city wasn't rediscovered untill 1748. I was curious as to how it was discovered. Was it stumbled upon by some kids? Were there clues and someone went looking?

Answer 1

If your in the vicinity of San Diego, CA they are having an amazing exhibit on this topic.  You can even see some of the recovered bodies from the eruption.

Answer 2

The excavation goes on.  About a third of the site became open in the nineties, including a large arena.  Most of the important art (and a lot of other stuff) found there was moved to the Naples' Archeological Museum; the stuff on site in Pompeii consists mostly of replicas.

Answer 3

Domenico Fontana stumbled upon the site accidentally. They started excavating March 23, 1748. But major excatvating didn't start until the 1900's. By then, a lot of the artifacts that could have been discovered and studied using more recent technology was ruined.

Answer 4

It was discovered by workers who were digging the foundation for a palace for Charles III of Naples. There were some clues as to the location of the city from the writings of Pliny the Younger who described the destruction, but attempts to find the city had failed. It was only found by accident.

I don't know who was the very first to find the city, probably some workman forgotten by history, but the excavation was led by Karl Weber, a Swiss engineer. Charles III payed for and supported the excavations, but they were generally poorly done and many artifacts were plundered as treasure, while Charles seemed to be most interested in getting artifacts to decorate his palace with. A lot was probably lost thanks to those first excavations.

Answer 5

The BBC did extensive research into Pompeii as well as the lesser known Herculaneum.  You'll find very interesting info at their site ::

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/rom...

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