Pompeii: The New Dig
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- Episode
- Episode 3 - The Final Hours
- Broadcast Info
- 2024 (58 mins)
- Description
- Pompeii: The New Dig. This new landmark three-part series follows the most extensive archaeological excavation in Pompeii for a generation. Nearly two years in the making, with exclusive access to the dig and the all-Italian team of archaeologists, the series follows the excavation of an entire city block, Insula 10, in the north of the city. Told through the drama of the dig, the stunning discoveries and stylised fresco-inspired animations, which imagine what life was like in Pompeii before the eruption and the horror faced by the residents as Vesuvius erupted in AD 79. The excavation aims to unearth the buildings, their purpose, who lived there, and what happened to them during the eruption. From the bodies of victims, workers’ tools, a commercial bakery, upscale laundry to charcoal drawings of gladiators and a 2000-year-old fresco of a pizza, no one could have predicted what they would find. Alongside the present tense story of the dig, the series investigates the timeline of the eruption. From the violent earthquakes that shook the city in the years before the eruption to the day of the disaster, Vesuvius first slowly buries Pompeii and then delivers the killer blows in the form of pyroclastic flows. Artefacts and evidence found at the dig site, reveals what Pompeiians were doing in the final hours of the city as they turned to their gods for salvation. For the first time pioneering new research finds hard evidence that some Pompeiians escaped the city and survived the eruption. From evidence hidden in Pompeii’s storeroom of prominent Pompeiians, the investigation discovers inscriptions that date from after the eruption and bear the same name in the area surrounding the destroyed city. Further evidence reveals that in the years after the disaster, a building boom in the Naples area may have been to accommodate the influx of refugees from the destroyed Pompeii. The archaeologists complete the excavation of a wealthy residence, a bakery and a laundry and, in doing so, discover evidence of what people were doing in the city during its final hours. Nineteen hours after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius begins, most of Pompeii is buried in metres of pumice. All over the city, roofs have collapsed, killing many, but some residents survive. As the eruption begins to subside, are they over the worst?
- Genre
- History; Vulcanology; Archaeology
How to cite this record
The Open University, "Pompeii: The New Dig". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/249273 (Accessed 08 Nov 2025)