Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Vesuvius.

The eruption of this mighty volcano is one

of the most catastrophic events in ancient history,

yet it perfectly preserves Pompeii and Herculaneum.

THOMAS: The eruption gives us a really rare

glimpse into what life was like.

How did Romans live?

NARRATOR: Now, a team of experts investigates

a mysterious third Roman settlement,

discovered beneath the ash that

explodes out of Vesuvius -- Oplontis.

It is unique.

We don't have anything this well preserved in

any site or any museum in the world.

NARRATOR: This extraordinary place reveals new evidence

about the wrath of the mighty eruption.

It was a really instantaneous, destructive force,

and that's what you see reflected in that fresco.

NARRATOR: How the Romans lived and died.

Oplontis is really answering questions that we have had

for years.

NARRATOR: And offers tantalizing clues that

lead to Rome's most notorious emperors.

CLARKE: The owner of this villa may have

been the famous wife of the emperor Nero.

NARRATOR: With unique access to this incredible site,

we will unearth its vast villas,

we'll discover dozens of ancient skeletons,

and decode their lives to reveal

new information about the catastrophic eruption

and the ancient civilization it changed forever.

In 79 CE,

the Roman world is rocked by

one of the worst natural disasters in history.

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius covers Pompeii in molten rock.

Ash envelopes and preserves Pompeiians,

turning the site into a macabre time capsule of the past.

Pompeii is the volcano's most famous victim,

but it's not the only one.

Vesuvius also cast its lethal shadow over nearby Herculaneum.

Today, archaeologists are unearthing a third

victim -- Oplontis.

Hidden for nearly 2,000 years.

this incredible site is now slowly

being freed from Vesuvius's volcanic grip.

THOMAS: Oplontis is unique because of what it preserves.

it preserves really one of the largest

and most elaborate Roman villas.

NARRATOR: In 1964, archaeologists uncover

an ancient ruin here,

buried under 30 feet of volcanic ash,

almost twice as deep as Pompeii.

It is once a sprawling Roman residence.

Bright, lavish frescoes adorn many of its 99 rooms.

Exquisite courtyards called peristyles

accompany its lush gardens

that have unbeaten views of the Bay of Naples,

and on the east side,

an enormous 200-foot pool extends out across the grounds.

What can this magnificent villa reveal

about one of history's deadliest eruptions?

THOMAS: It's a remarkable place, and it's also

a place that not a lot of people know about.

NARRATOR: Two miles outside Pompeii,

the villas of Oplontis cover more than four acres,

split into two main sites.

Michael Thomas has been investigating here

for over 15 years.

THOMAS: When you look at the site of Oplontis,

there's a lot of keys to understanding the eruption

of Vesuvius,

the way it was damaged and where the damage came from.

Vesuvius is never too far away.

NARRATOR: Archaeologists have been excavating this site

for decades,

yet a third of the area is still

covered by the thousands of tons of volcanic debris.

This wall is probably close to 30,

33 feet of material that covered the site.

NARRATOR: Michael examines the ash and rock

that smothers Oplontis.

Here, we have a column that was literally

snapped in half from the eruption of Vesuvius.

NARRATOR: He believes this pillar reveals

a clue about the power of the blast.

The fallen section lies pointing towards the volcano,

not away from it.

THOMAS: We really get a sense of the power of the eruption,

sort of like a football player

sliding in and taking you out from your feet.

You're gonna fall forward, you're not gonna fall backwards,

and that's what's happened here.

The force of Vesuvius hit, snaps this forward,

and here we have that bit of broken column still stuck in

the wall of un-excavated material.

NARRATOR: This large pillar isn't simply pushed over.

It's brutally mown down.

Whoever was still at Oplontis had

no chance of outrunning Vesuvius's wrath.

THOMAS: There are different layers in

this wall of volcanic material.

NARRATOR: In between thick layers of the crumbling ash

and pumice stone are thin layers of dense rock.

The great mushroom cloud collapses and creates

this hard, thin layer,

which is the remnants of the pyroclastic flow.

NARRATOR: A pyroclastic flow is a shockwave

of fast moving ash and hot gases.

It is produced by the most violent volcanic eruptions.

This process repeats several times,

and it's present in this wall of material.

We have a good idea of the series events of the eruption.

Much of this comes from the historian Pliny the Younger,

who watched it from the far reaches of the Bay of Naples.

NARRATOR: Pliny writes that in August of 79 CE,

he sees a frightening cloud coming out of Vesuvius.

He vividly describes the cloud as

it rises for miles into the sky.

It becomes known as a Plinian column.

As the column collapses, millions of tons of ash

and hot gas hit the sides of the volcano.

It spreads out in a pyroclastic flow.

Traveling at incredible speeds,

it engulfs anything in its path.

Imagine, it doesn't fall over, it just goes straight down,

hits the sides of Vesuvius, and takes off.

Some people estimate it as fast as 300 miles per hour.

Some people estimate it as much as 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

NARRATOR: The avalanche of toxic hot gases sweeps

across Oplontis in a matter of minutes.

THOMAS: It would have been very terrifying,

because you're talking about intense heat.

It was not a pleasant experience.

NARRATOR: Not one body has been found at this villa,

but a neighboring villa at

Oplontis conceals a different story.

Here, archaeologists unearth an area of 60,000 square feet.

As they clear ash from inside the rooms,

they make a gruesome discovery.

Fifty-four skeletons -- men, women, and children,

huddled close together in the corner of the room.

What can the evidence here reveal about

the final moments of these people's lives?

Pier Paolo Petrone has dedicated his career

to investigating the victims of Vesuvius.

PETRONE: The eruption caused different effects at

different distances from the volcano,

different ways of death, principally due to

the amount of heat.

NARRATOR: Pier Paolo examines skulls from nearby Herculaneum.

Herculaneum is hit by the same

thermal shockwave that rocks Oplontis.

The skulls show the effect of

the extreme heat of a pyroclastic flow.

Here, we have very clear evidence of

the effects of heat on the skull of this individual.

You see this kind of blackening outside and also

inside the skull, and this kind of cracking of the bone,

which indicates that the brain of these individual is going to

boil and then led the skull to explode.

NARRATOR: The bones snap as if they are

severed with a sharp blade.

NARRATOR: The evidence from Herculaneum initially suggests

the people of Oplontis

will suffer a grisly and painful death.

But Pier Paolo makes a surprising discovery.

PETRONE: At the very beginning, archaeologists

thought that people suffered a prolonged agony.

But in this scan of the victims from Oplontis,

we don't see any kind

of conscious reaction, like self-protective stance.

The adult individuals are just laying very relaxed.

So that means that people had no time to react to the heat.

So the brain was switched off instantly,

just in a blink of an eye.

NARRATOR: The 54 men, women, and children at

Oplontis lose their lives to the volcano,

but 2,000 years later we know at least they felt no pain.

Why are they found huddled

close together in this particular room?

And can jewels discovered on their bodies

reveal more about these unlucky victims?

NARRATOR: Oplontis,

buried by the devastating eruption

that also destroys Pompeii in 79 CE.

Inside a room at the south side of the estate,

archaeologists discover 54 people killed by the deadly

fury of Vesuvius.

The 20 people at the back of

the room have no valuables with them.

They're possibly slaves or workers,

but when archaeologists examine the group at

the front,

they find many still grasping precious jewelry.

One woman wears an elaborate hairpin depicting a goddess.

Another carries delicate pearl earrings,

and close to her body,

she cradles over 300 gold and silver coins.

Could these riches help unlock

the mystery of who these people are?

Some of these people have very important, very rich objects

with them, and other people had almost nothing with them.

NARRATOR: Investigators are intrigued by one of the wealthy

victims discovered at the front of the building.

PETRONE: A very particular finding was

the one of a young woman, probably

she was in her twenties -- she had a box with her just

full of golden objects,

coins, a snake, golden ring,

and also a pair of pearl earrings.

NARRATOR: Pearls are the ultimate symbol

of wealth in Roman times.

They are extremely rare and more expensive than gold.

PETRONE: So these are one of the most

expensive pieces found all around Vesuvius with skeletons.

So this person had to be very rich.

NARRATOR: Her identity remains a mystery,

But the excavations reveal one last dramatic clue

about her life.

Some very tiny bones were found near her of a fetus,

so she was probably at the moment of

the tragedy was just in the latest stages of pregnancy.

NARRATOR: Rich and poor, young and old,

all meet the same terrible fate.

Jenny Muslin has been working at Oplontis is for 10 years.

She's investigating why the 54 victims huddle in this room.

She believes the room's location holds the key to

this mystery.

We're walking along the south side rooms, which would have

been used for storing goods as well as taking goods in.

NARRATOR: Archaeologists excavating in front of

the store room discover intriguing clues.

They analyze soil samples and reveal

that when Vesuvius erupts,

this building directly overlooks the sea.

MUSLIN: In antiquity, we would have been on the sea coast.

This is actually a small cove, and we found parts of a pier,

so that we know that ships could have docked here

and loaded and unloaded at their leisure.

NARRATOR: This discovery might explain why so

many people die huddled in this building.

On the day of the tragedy, Vesuvius erupts violently.

It launches a huge cloud over

Oplontis, four miles away on the coast.

Families quickly gather their valuables,

taking coins and jewelry, and seek refuge.

Over 50 people, rich and poor,

pile into a sheltered room together

and watch in fear as Vesuvius spews out ash and pumice.

Then, suddenly, the cloud collapses.

The pyroclastic wave of volcanic debris hits

the victims and buries them 30 feet deep.

MUSLIN: These people, among whom there were women, children,

and adult men,

we think they were probably waiting for a ship

to come and save them.

NARRATOR: The people of Oplontis look to the sea for rescue.

The reason why may lie a few miles away.

Puteoli, the biggest port in the entire Roman Empire,

is just 18 miles across the Bay of Naples.

Misenum, the base of Romans' military fleet, is

only three miles further to the west,

but no rescue ever arrives.

MUSLIN: We found them all huddled at the back of the room,

waiting for a ship that never,

ever came, and they died here in the pyroclastic flow,

still waiting.

NARRATOR: These storerooms are built right on the waterfront.

They have direct access to two of

the busiest ports of the Roman Empire,

with trade lanes connecting to all the known world.

So is it possible that this villa

is more than just a luxurious seaside estate?

And how can a mysterious discovery inside this villa

overturn what we thought we knew about the ancient eruption?

NARRATOR: At Oplontis, excavators uncover

two monumental Roman buildings.

Evidence here is transforming our understanding

of Roman life in the shadow of Vesuvius

and is revolutionizing what we know about the eruption itself.

When archaeologists unearth the smaller villa at Oplontis,

on the ground floor, surrounding the central courtyard,

they find a series of storage rooms frozen in time.

On the southern side, a room

filled with piles of mysterious charred material,

and in a nearby space,

they discover hundreds of upturned amphorae,

large ceramic containers used to transport wine.

They're stacked from floor to ceiling, ready for use.

What can these clues reveal about the last days of Oplontis?

Archaeologist Jenny Muslin takes a sample of

the strange, burnt substance outside

to examine it more closely.

MUSLIN: These are carbonized pomegranates that

were carbonized in the eruption.

So you can see, they are very, very well preserved.

You can make out the skin of

the pomegranate, right, as if it was new but blackened.

NARRATOR: The pomegranates are evidence that

the villa's owner runs a lucrative export business,

but this is a truly

revolutionary discovery for a different reason.

For centuries, historians believe the eruption

of Vesuvius is in August of

79 CE, because of the date reported in Pliny's

eyewitness account.

MUSLIN: Since pomegranates are a fall fruit,

this could not have been picked in August.

It's very clear that this has to be in October.

NARRATOR: The eruption of Vesuvius has been

closely investigated ever since

the chance discovery of Pompeii nearly 300 years ago.

Here at Oplontis,

it is still giving up its secrets today.

Further evidence reveals that the villa's

owner exports more than just raw fruit.

This was a massive industrial operation for bottling wine,

and this is wine in the amounts that were gonna

go all over the Roman world.

NARRATOR: At the time, the city of Rome

alone tops one million people.

It's estimated the Roman citizens drink more than

26 million gallons of wine here every year.

While we have about 70 amphorae still stacked here,

this is only a fraction of a much, much larger operation,

where we had amphorae stretching all the way back here,

all the way on this side, all the way on the opposite side

of the colonnade -- there were 1,431 of these.

So this is a huge, massive operation,

very successful business.

They were in full swing at the time of the eruption.

NARRATOR: Most of the amphorae have now been moved into

storage rooms, where they are cataloged and further analyzed.

They reveal more clues to the technology in use here.

MUSLIN: When we're first analyzing an amphora,

we can also tell a lot from evidence of what was inside,

organic material, for example.

We can see inside the neck of this amphora,

this dark brown residue that is from the pine pitch that was

used to waterproof it.

NARRATOR: The discovery of the pine pitch reveals

the Roman winemakers are surprisingly sophisticated in

their packing,

but it also reveals that Roman wine has a strange taste.

Pine resin gives a very strong gasoline flavor to the wine,

and we don't think the Romans cared that much about it,

although they seem to care more about what it looked like.

So they did various things to make wine look older than

it was,

like adding lentils to it to turn white wine to a darker,

tawny yellow.

Uh, they would smoke wine, again,

to have that aged feeling to it.

Um, but in terms of taste, this wouldn't have been very good.

NARRATOR: The fertile lands around Vesuvius are perfect

for vineyards.

Locals pray to the wine God, Bacchus, for good harvests.

Oplontis ships more than 11,000 gallons

of wine across the empire every year.

The Romans mix the wine with water.

All members of society enjoy this drink,

including children in their early teens.

After use, amphorae are recycled,

washed, and dried and re-waterproofed

so they can be filled again.

MUSLIN: We have here unparalleled evidence

for what workers were doing

to put wine into bottles in preparation for shipping.

This is really answering a lot of questions that

we have had for years about how does wine travel?

How does that process happen?

And Oplontis is answering those questions,

which is really exciting.

NARRATOR: But in October of 79 CE,

just as workers here prepare a new consignment of wine

for shipment,

Vesuvius strikes and abruptly ends this booming business.

What happens at the neighboring villa

in those terrible hours,

and can clues reveal the identity

of the owners of this luxurious residence?

NARRATOR: At Oplontis, archaeologists are

unearthing a lavish Roman mansion,

frozen in time by the apocalyptic eruption of

Vesuvius in 79 CE.

No skeletons are found inside this villa.

So investigators hunt for other evidence that

can shed light on the villa's owners.

The residence is fitted with every comfort,

down to a beautifully decorated private spa.

This is the private bath, the hot room

of the villa's bathing complex,

and it's a room that saw heat and regular use,

because they were pumping hot air from below

the floor and around up through the walls.

NARRATOR: The owners of this villa can afford

heated floors to warm their steam room.

Most of the wall is painted in

yellow ochre, except for a strange red section.

But in the corners, the paint fades to yellow.

Michael believes this is not

an artistic choice but the result of Vesuvius.

The heat essentially changes the color.

It was originally a yellow ochre, and then by heating it,

it turns into red ochre,

and that little piece of painting really shows us

the damage inflicted by the eruption of Vesuvius.

It was a really instantaneous, destructive force,

and that's what you see reflected in that fresco.

NARRATOR: Before Vesuvius turns it into an inescapable inferno,

this is a luxurious sanctuary of relaxation.

John Clarke has dedicated nearly 20 years

to decoding the mysteries of this villa.

He wants to know more about

the rich people who own this palatial residence.

We've discovered 99 spaces, including huge gardens,

this enormous swimming pool, and the entire East Wing,

just for entertainment.

Here we have the most beautiful room in this villa.

It is unique.

We don't have anything this well preserved in

any site or any museum in the world.

Here we have a whole room just as it was in ancient times.

NARRATOR: Faux marble panels and alabaster

columns are painted on the walls.

These columns go around the entire room to

give the illusion that you're surrounded by luxury.

NARRATOR: The frescoes transform the room to make

it look like a sumptuous royal hall.

CLARKE: But it's all a fantasy.

NARRATOR: Strict Roman law forbids citizens from

building grand halls in their private residences.

But here, the villa's owners find

a loophole to satisfy their ambition.

They want to show that they belong

to the upper echelon of society.

They paid artists to create the most fantastic,

regal architecture as possible without breaking the rules.

NARRATOR: The high level of craftsmanship

and the monumental size of the frescoes

are important clues to the identity

of the people who live here.

The location alone is testimony to

the exceptional affluence of the owner.

CLARKE: Our investigations have proven that this villa

was on a cliff, situated 45 feet above the sea itself

with its own private harbor.

NARRATOR: The owners of this magnificent mansion likely live

most of their time in the empire's capital.

THOMAS: These sort of expensive, opulent villas dotted

the entire coastline of the Bay of Naples,

and many of them are owned by the senatorial elite of Rome.

These are summer houses.

You can only imagine, just like we have

in the Hamptons, for example,

where the rich and famous come, and they all gather around

at each other's houses for these big parties.

NARRATOR: Villas like this are where Rome's rich escape

the noise and sweltering heat of the crowded capital.

John looks for the name of the aristocrats

who vacation here.

In a storage room,

a small stack of plain amphorae

hides a possible clue to their identity.

There it is.

That's the amphora, which has this inscription on it.

It reads, "To Secundus, the slave of Poppaea."

So many people for that reason call this the Villa of Poppaea.

NARRATOR: This is not an ordinary family name.

Poppaea may have been the Poppaea who

was the famous wife of the Emperor Nero.

NARRATOR: Nero is the most notorious emperor

in Roman history.

He is infamous for a lifestyle of debauchery and excess.

The Bay of Naples is his favorite playground.

He frequently comes to the nearby town

of Baia to enjoy its famous hot springs,

and to Puteoli, where he stages lavish boat parties.

Nero owns several properties here,

including a spectacular villa now underwater

due to sea level changes.

More clues found in the area offer further evidence that

Nero's wife, Poppaea,

might own the larger villa at Oplontis.

There was a whole clan called Poppaea.

The clan is attested in Pompeii, as well.

There's a magnificent house,

the best one in Pompeii, which we know was owned by somebody

who had this clan name.

NARRATOR: Poppaea's relatives

are a prominent family in Pompeii.

Their names appear in inscriptions

all across the town.

Nero and Poppaea die more than 10 years before the eruption.

By the time disaster strikes in the fall of 79 CE,

the new owners of this villa might have already returned to

Rome from their vacation.

But what happens to their servants?

And what can this mansion reveal about life in

servitude to the rich and powerful in the Roman world?

Oplontis.

Hidden between Pompeii and Herculaneum sits the Villa

of Poppaea, holiday home fit for an emperor,

buried for 2,000 years in the volcanic rock of Vesuvius.

Discoveries here shed light on the darker side of Roman life,

slavery.

This villa gives us a clean shot of life, not just of

the wealthy owners,

but also of the slaves who were attending them.

NARRATOR: Long, striped corridors lead to

the inner workings of the villa,

the slaves' domain.

At its center,

a peristyle featuring a large water fountain.

On the upper floor, bedrooms where the slaves sleep,

alongside simple latrines and washrooms.

What can these living quarters reveal about

the lives of slaves in the Roman Empire?

Michael looks for traces of the men and women

who work here behind the scenes.

As he leaves the luxurious entertainment rooms,

something catches his eye.

This painting gives us a clue about what happens in

this room.

NARRATOR: These simple frescoes stand in stark contrast to

the opulence of the rest of the villa.

This is not a painting that one would stop and admire

and look at the details of -- this is a huge corridor.

It's a place of movement, and who's doing

the most movement in a Roman house? Slaves.

This corridor would have been a thoroughfare for slaves.

Throngs of slaves run up and down these halls,

possibly attending to the whims of Nero himself.

To find out more about them,

Michael follows the corridor to a secluded courtyard.

THOMAS: This peristyle is the hub of the slave activity

of this villa.

It's where the slaves slept, it's where they worked,

it's where they washed -- these holes that

you see up above the roof line here,

those are the windows for the upstairs quarters.

NARRATOR: This is the engine room that

keeps the Villa of Poppaea running smoothly.

Hundreds labor here in the shadows, perhaps

so that Nero's family can enjoy their luxury vacation.

Slaves make up one in 10 of the population

of the Roman Empire in the First Century CE.

Even middle class Romans buy slaves.

In Oplontis,

the men maintain the villa and tend to the lush gardens,

vineyards, and orchards,

while the women cook and serve expensive

wine to the guests at elaborate banquets.

Those with specialized skills become

tutors and accountants to the elite.

Slaves are a vital part of every elite Roman household.

Michael ventures upstairs to their sleeping quarters.

So this is another clue about the slaves here,

and what we have is some graffiti.

This is their voice, and this is how we see what they're

thinking and what's important to them.

NARRATOR: One graffito in particular

captures Michael's attention.

THOMAS: There's a Greek graffito here,

which actually says, "Remember Beryllos."

These words provide a window into the slave's aspirations.

Most people believe it's a reference to this famous

freedman who was

a tutor and an important member of the court of

the Emperor Nero.

NARRATOR: The graffito is more evidence that

this villa is connected to Emperor Nero

and is a reminder that even

a slave can earn freedom and greatness.

Maybe this is a message for other slaves or maybe

it was just something that made him feel good.

NARRATOR: This message of hope survives,

frozen in time by the eruption.

THOMAS: It's a rare find to have this kind of evidence of spaces

dedicated to slaves and their activities

in the Pompeiian area, really in the Roman Empire.

NARRATOR: But their death remains a mystery.

The bodies of the people who work here

have never been found.

Michael wants to know if they

could have escaped the fury of Vesuvius.

In one corner of the courtyard,

a mysterious ramp of stairs appears to lead

straight down into the ground.

A team that excavated on the other side

of the villa found the exit of this tunnel.

So we now know it provided access from the slave peristyle

out to the cliff face that led down to the sea.

This tunnel would have been a way to bring supplies in,

so slaves could have gone down

and met boats that had supplies, like wine and food,

that were needed in the villa.

NARRATOR: The impressive tunnel cuts half a mile through

the cliff and is the quickest way to reach the sea.

As Vesuvius begins to erupt,

this might provide a perfect escape route.

But as investigators unearth more of the villa,

it becomes apparent that something else,

as well as bodies, is missing.

Where are all the personal objects,

all the precious items of the rich owners?

Are they rescued from the villa before the eruption?

NARRATOR: Two thousand years after Vesuvius's

catastrophic eruption,

archaeologists are unveiling the secrets of Pompeii's

mysterious lost twin, Oplontis.

They uncover an enormous and luxurious villa that

might, at one point, belong to Nero's wife, Poppaea.

But inside, all the valuables are missing,

and some decorative elements are found in strange places.

These columns came from 200 feet away in the villa

and they were the supports

for the porch along the pool.

NARRATOR: They seem carefully laid down.

They are not mown down by the random fury of Vesuvius.

John wants to find out why they are here.

An expert examination reveals

these are not regular columns.

CLARKE: They were made from a very expensive material.

This particular marble is quite rare.

It's only found on one island, on

the island of Lesbos in the Mediterranean beyond Greece.

NARRATOR: The cost of shipping alone is equal to 10 years

of a regular Roman soldier's salary.

And they're a single column instead of in pieces,

which made them much more precious.

NARRATOR: But on the day of the eruption,

most of the columns from the poolside terrace are

already gone.

CLARKE: Why are only a handful left?

Because the intact ones were sold off.

Only the broken ones are here.

NARRATOR: John thinks that these columns fall well before 79 CE,

and the intact columns are not the only

expensive decor that is removed and converted

into cash.

All of the precious materials at the villa were removed.

They stripped marble decoration from

the entire east wing and sold it off.

NARRATOR: This evidence suggests another crisis

occurs here before the eruption.

Ivo Van der Graaff is part of

the team of archaeologists working at Oplontis.

Our cameras have exclusive access to follow him inside

the stock rooms of the ancient wine bottling complex.

The space is now used to

store materials recovered from the dig,

but at the back, it hides an important piece of evidence.

This is really interesting.

This is a great, big cistern

used to store water for the complex.

NARRATOR: The massive tank is 100 feet long and 5 feet wide.

It's connected to the local network of aqueducts

and is meant to supply fresh water to the entire estate.

But at the time of the eruption,

it is already out of use for some time.

They decide to shut down the cistern and fill it up with

rubble, and then they build these great big walls for

the storage rooms you see above us.

NARRATOR: Ivo believes that the water network feeding

this cistern is disrupted,

rendering it dry and useless.

VAN DER GRAAFF: This tells us that there was

a major earthquake in the region,

and it affected all the surrounding towns,

including Pompeii and Herculaneum to a massive degree,

destroying the water supply and destroying the aqueducts

that also supplied those towns,

including Oplontis itself, as well.

NARRATOR: In 62 CE, 17 years before the great eruption,

an earthquake shakes the hills around Oplontis,

damaging its vital aqueducts.

In the aftermath, residents of the larger villa

reinforce the pool

and push fragments of pottery into the earth to prevent

the portico from collapsing.

The owners sell off valuable materials,

decorative marble and wood,

a hint that the villa is in decline.

Analysis of organic material from the garden confirms that

it's inundated not with lush plants,

but bindweed vines, a clear sign of neglect,

but at the neighboring bottling facility,

business must go on.

The clever entrepreneurs repurpose and restore what is

damaged so that the facility can continue to operate.

VAN DER GRAAFF: We actually have evidence of repairs

and construction still happening at the time of the eruption,

as a population was still rebuilding after

the earthquake.

NARRATOR: Traces of the rebuilding are still

visible in the courtyard.

VAN DER GRAAFF: Here, we have a good example

of repairs that happened after the earthquake.

You can see that this column is different from that one.

This one is made out of brick, because

it was repaired after the earthquake of 62.

NARRATOR: In the face of destruction

caused by the earthquake,

the people in the second villa picked themselves up

and rebuild.

Just a few years later, business is once

again flourishing.

They cannot imagine that the worst is yet to come.

[explosion blasts]

The catastrophic eruption of Vesuvius buries

Oplontis in a thick layer of ash,

preserving for 2,000 years

one of the most exclusive villas of ancient Rome.

The large villa reveals new secrets about

the life of the empire's wealthiest and their slaves,

and at the neighboring villa,

evidence of a new date for the eruption

as 54 victims remind us of

the human cost of this terrible tragedy.

[music playing]