where are the ruins of pompeii?
Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples
neutral
 The Romans captured and burnt Seleucia and Ctesiphon to the ground , yet they were forced to retreat once the Roman soldiers contracted a deadly disease ( possibly smallpox ) that soon ravaged the Roman world . Although they withdrew , from this point forward the city of Dura @-@ Europos remained in Roman hands . 

entailment
 Although his administration was marked by a relative absence of major military or political conflicts , Titus faced a number of major disasters during his brief reign . On August 24 , 79 , barely two months after his accession , Mount Vesuvius erupted , resulting in the almost complete destruction of life and property in the cities and resort communities around the Bay of Naples . The cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried under metres of stone and lava , killing thousands of citizens . Titus appointed two ex @-@ consuls to organise and coordinate the relief effort , while personally donating large amounts of money from the imperial treasury to aid the victims of the volcano . Additionally , he visited Pompeii once after the eruption and again the following year . The city was lost for nearly 1700 years before its accidental rediscovery in 1748 . Since then , its excavation has provided an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city at the height of the Roman Empire , frozen at the moment it was buried on August 24 , 79 . The Forum , the baths , many houses , and some out @-@ of @-@ town villas like the Villa of the Mysteries remain surprisingly well preserved . Today , it is one of the most popular tourist attractions of Italy and a UNESCO World Heritage Site . On @-@ going excavations reveal new insights into the Roman history and culture . 

neutral
 The volcano then entered a stage of more frequent , but less violent , eruptions until the most recent Plinian eruption , which destroyed Pompeii . 

entailment
 During an excavation in 2004 , a team of archaeologists discovered cultural remains buried by the 1815 eruption . They were kept intact beneath the 3 @-@ metre @-@ deep pyroclastic deposits . At the site , dubbed the " Pompeii of the East " , the artifacts were preserved in the positions they had occupied in 1815 . 

entailment
 By 2003 , around 1 @,@ 044 casts made from impressions of bodies in the ash deposits had been recovered in and around Pompeii , with the scattered bones of another 100 . The remains of about 332 bodies have been found at Herculaneum ( 300 in arched vaults discovered in 1980 ) . What percentage these numbers are of the total dead or the percentage of the dead to the total number at risk remain completely unknown . 
