Claim: Pompeii had a population of 11,000

Pompeii was an ancient Roman town-city near modern Naples , in the Campania region of Italy , in the territory of the comune of Pompei . Pompeii , along with Herculaneum and many villas in the suzrrounding area , was mostly destroyed and buried under 4 to of volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD .   Researchers believe that the town was founded in the seventh or sixth century BC by the Osci or Oscans . It came under the domination of Rome in the 4th century BC , and was conquered and became a Roman colony in 80 BC after it joined an unsuccessful rebellion against the Roman Republic . By the time of its destruction , 160 years later , its population was estimated at 11,000 people , and the city had a complex water system , an amphitheatre , gymnasium , and a port .   The eruption destroyed the city , killing its inhabitants and burying it under tons of ash . Evidence for the destruction originally came from a surviving letter by Pliny the Younger , who saw the eruption from a distance and described the death of his uncle Pliny the Elder , an admiral of the Roman fleet , who tried to rescue citizens . The site was lost for about 1,500 years until its initial rediscovery in 1599 and broader rediscovery almost 150 years later by Spanish engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre in 1748 . The objects that lay beneath the city have been preserved for more than a millennium because of the long lack of air and moisture . These artifacts provide an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city during the Pax Romana . During the excavation , plaster was used to fill in the voids in the ash layers that once held human bodies . This allowed archaeologists to see the exact position the person was in when he or she died .   Pompeii has been a tourist destination for over 250 years . Today it has UNESCO World Heritage Site status and is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Italy , with approximately 2.5 million visitors every year .