The Buried City
On sale
22nd May 2025
Price: £22
‘The best book on Pompeii I’ve ever read’ STEPHEN FRY
‘An essential read for anyone interested in this extraordinary place’ TELEGRAPH
‘Brilliant’ TOM HOLLAND
A vast area of Pompeii is being excavated for the first time, revealing astonishing insights into how people really lived. In this revelatory new history, Director of Pompeii Gabriel Zuchtriegel shares the untold 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.
‘A fascinating new book about what we are still learning about this most haunting of all lost cities… deeply moving’ MAIL ON SUNDAY
‘Makes the familiar magical’ DAN SNOW
‘An essential read for anyone interested in this extraordinary place’ TELEGRAPH
‘Brilliant’ TOM HOLLAND
A vast area of Pompeii is being excavated for the first time, revealing astonishing insights into how people really lived. In this revelatory new history, Director of Pompeii Gabriel Zuchtriegel shares the untold 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.
‘A fascinating new book about what we are still learning about this most haunting of all lost cities… deeply moving’ MAIL ON SUNDAY
‘Makes the familiar magical’ DAN SNOW
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Reviews
'A brilliant book. A learned guide to life in Pompeii both in the Roman past and the twenty-first century, deftly weaving the ancient with the modern, the personal with the historical. The end result is a fascinating, affable and constantly illuminating exploration of Pompeii as an idea and as an archaeological site but also as a home for thousands of Roman people from all walks of life.'
'Archaeology has never been told so vividly.'
Fantastic! Hugely informative, clever, thoughtful and playful (like all my favourite archaeologists).
'This is not just the best book on Pompeii I've ever read - it's the best book on the glorious realities of archaeology itself. Gabriel Zuchtriegel will surely inspire a whole new generation in the field with his blend of knowledge, experience and boundless passion. For this reader ... well, it has left me panting to revisit Pompeii with the new, excited eyes that this magnificent book has given me.'
'The Buried City tells the story of Zuchtriegel's memorable personal journey to taking charge at Pompeii, along the way revealing how he's righting the wrongs of his predecessors and presiding over the new and remarkable discoveries at this greatest of archaeological sites.'
'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.'
A brilliant account of the latest discoveries at Pompeii and a deeply personal celebration of the inherent fascination of antiquity.
A brilliant book. A learned guide to life in Pompeii... deftly weaving the ancient with the modern. Fascinating, affable and constantly illuminating.
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.
An exceptionally moving and thought provoking book, it reads as a conversation with the past, and leads you to reflect on how that conversation changes with each generation. The Buried City is a deeply moving examination of the lives of ordinary people in Pompeii through the extraordinary objects discovered there, it is also a beautiful reflection on what Pompeii can tell us about ourselves.
Fantastic! Hugely informative, clever, thoughtful and playful
'Gabriel Zuchtriegel's book is as fabulous as it is unusual.'
'This is not just the best book on Pompeii I've ever read - it's the best book on the glorious realities of archaeology itself. Gabriel Zuchtriegel will surely inspire a whole new generation in the field with his blend of knowledge, experience and boundless passion. It has left me panting to revisit Pompeii with the new, excited eyes that this magnificent book has given me.'
'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.'
'Zuchtriegel has brought us an experimental, personal, moving, engaging account of Pompeii. He courageously shows that archaeology is not a dry science, but rather one driven by the personal experience and passions of the archeologist. This book reveals the excitement of new excavations at Pompeii while serving as a deeply personal testament to Zuchtriegel's background and upbringing, his love of music, his path to becoming an archaeologist.'
'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.'
'A fascinating new book about what we are still learning about this most haunting of all lost cities... the discoveries will continue for many years yet. And they can be as deeply moving as any film or novel.'
'[Gabriel] has written an essential read for anyone interested in this extraordinary place - or indeed anyone interested in running an organisation with baggage. He has a light touch, yet is philosophically challenging.'
The everyday is his highest art. This book has an honestly expressed aim to encourage readers to bring their whole selves into their thinking about Pompeii... There is much charming chatter in The Buried City as well as learned disquisition, always lightly delivered, and a powerful sense of a man grapping with what we can take from antiquity.
In The Buried City, the director of Pompeii, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, reveals the latest archaeological finds to show what life was like in AD79 before Vesuvius erupted...What is special about Pompeii, Zuchtriegel says, is not its temples or theatres but its workshops, taverns, baths and bordellos, the unmade beds and uneaten meals, the lives, high and low, interrupted suddenly when the mountain exploded. All human life is there... Zuchtriegel speaks up for the under-privileged, including today... fascinating and well argued.