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The Buried City

Unearthing the Real Pompeii

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The Buried City

By: Gabriel Zuchtriegel, Jamie Bulloch - translator
Narrated by: Nick Biadon
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About this listen

'The best book on Pompeii I've ever read' STEPHEN FRY

This is Pompeii, as you've never seen it before.

In this revelatory history, Gabriel Zuchtriegel shares the new secrets of Pompeii. Over the last few years, a vast stretch of the city has been excavated for the first time. Now, drawing on these astonishing discoveries, The Buried City reveals the untold human stories that are at last emerging.

Pompeii is a world frozen in time. There are unmade beds, dishes left drying, tools abandoned by workmen, bodies embracing with love and fear. And alongside the remnants of everyday life, there are captivating works of art: lifelike portraits, exquisite frescos and mosaics, and the extraordinary sculpture of a sleeping boy, curled up under a blanket that's too small.

The Buried City reconstructs the catastrophe that destroyed Pompeii on 24 August 79 CE, but it also offers a behind-the-scenes tour of the city as it was before: who lived here, what mattered to them, and what happened in their final hours. It offers us a vivid sense of Pompeii's continuing relevance, and proves that ancient history is much closer to us than we think.©2025 Gabriel Zuchtriegel (P)2025 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
Ancient Archaeology Rome
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Critic Reviews

'Zuchtriegel makes the familiar magical. He challenges us to transform our relationship with the past, and shows us a new, far more satisfying, way to think about Pompeii and its people.' (DAN SNOW)
A brilliant account of the latest discoveries at Pompeii and a deeply personal celebration of the inherent fascination of antiquity. (TOM HOLLAND, author of PAX and DOMINION)
Fantastic! Hugely informative, clever, thoughtful and playful (NATALIE HAYNES, author of DIVINE MIGHT and PANDORA'S JAR)
A thoughtful, revelatory and above all deeply human account of life - and death - by the director of the most awe-inspiring archaeological site on the planet. Zuchtriegel describes the realities of his profession with such honesty and verve. (DAISY DUNN, author of IN THE SHADOW OF VESUVIUS: A LIFE OF PLINY)
A brilliant book. A learned guide to life in Pompeii... deftly weaving the ancient with the modern. Fascinating, affable and constantly illuminating. (Emma Southon, author of A FATAL THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM)

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