Everyday life preserved at Pompeii

Life before the eruption

Before the eruption, Pompeii’s inhabitants bought bread, repaired homes and supplied shops. Mills and ovens reveal how raw grain became a product. They preserve working lives less visible in lavish wall paintings.

Popidius Priscus’s bakery used lava mills turned by enslaved workers or animals, followed by an oven. With no surviving counter, suggested selling methods remain less certain than the equipment.

Work connecting shops and homes

Streets linked homes, shops and baths; residents relied on facilities beyond the household. Buildings changed use and construction continued. The eruption buried a city being repaired and reused, not a uniformly finished monument.

The House of the Oven was an older residence converted after earthquake damage. Unfinished painting and water works elsewhere reveal a city changing before 79 CE.

What the buried city preserved

Burial preserved objects through a disaster destroying lives. Modern excavation from 1748 exposed paintings to light and rain, with fading in some cases. Burial covered the city; excavation revealed it; conservation now limits the resulting damage.

Before and after

1. Second century BCE

   The residence later known as the House of the Oven was built.

2. 79 CE

   The eruption buried the town, preserving changes of use and unfinished decoration.

3. 1748

   Modern excavation began.

Key terms

Find context

The location and layer of discovery.

Deposits

Layers of accumulated volcanic material.

Conservation

Work limiting deterioration and preserving evidence.

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