There is a moment during every visit I make to Pompeii when the ancient city suddenly stops feeling ancient. Until then, I have usually been walking with our guests through Roman streets, entering houses and public buildings, looking at frescoes, fountains and shops. As we move through the site, I like to draw attention to the grooves worn into the stone by carts, the raised stepping stones that allowed people to cross the streets and the many small details that gradually reconstruct everyday life almost two thousand years ago.
It is fascinating, but I always feel there is still a certain distance between us and the people who once lived here. Then we see the casts.
Whenever I visit Pompeii with one of our Walk About Italy groups, I often find myself watching the reactions around me. At first there is usually shock, sometimes even horror. Then people become quiet, and little by little that first emotional response gives way to something else: the attempt to imagine.
Who was this person? Where were they going? Were they alone? Did they understand what was happening around them?
This is what makes the Pompeii casts so extraordinary to me. They do something that buildings, mosaics and archaeological objects rarely manage to do: they bring us face to face with individual human beings, not with Roman history in general, but with particular people caught in one of the most dramatic moments of the ancient world.
In this article
- What I feel standing in front of the Pompeii casts
- What happened in Pompeii in AD 79?
- The plaster cast technique — Giuseppe Fiorelli
- What the casts tell me
- Walking through Pompeii with Giovanna
- Visiting Pompeii on our Amalfi Coast Walking Tour
What I feel standing in front of the Pompeii casts
The plaster casts of Pompeii are not sculptures, and nobody arranged their gestures or expressions for artistic effect. They exist because, after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, bodies buried beneath volcanic material eventually decomposed, leaving empty spaces inside the hardened deposits. Centuries later, archaeologists discovered that these cavities still retained the shape of what had once been there.
When plaster was poured into them, human forms reappeared.
For me, it is often the smallest details that make the strongest impression: a bent leg, an arm drawn toward the face, a body curled inward, the texture of clothing or the outline of footwear. I can admire a Roman mosaic intellectually or study the architecture of a domus, but the casts from Pompeii affect me in a very different way.
Almost two thousand years separate us from the people who died here, yet fear, uncertainty, vulnerability and the instinct to protect ourselves need no explanation. The casts shorten that distance immediately, and I think this is why so many of our guests remember them long after they have left Pompeii.
What happened in Pompeii in AD 79?
To understand the casts, I think it is important to understand the catastrophe that created the conditions for their preservation. Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, years after Pompeii had already suffered a major earthquake. Some buildings were still being repaired when the eruption began, but the inhabitants had neither our modern scientific understanding of volcanoes nor the instruments that today allow us to monitor volcanic activity.
The eruption sent an enormous column of volcanic material high above Vesuvius, while ash, pumice and small volcanic fragments began falling over the city. For hours, this material accumulated on streets, courtyards and rooftops. Roofs became increasingly unstable under the weight, moving through the city became more difficult and escape routes were gradually obstructed.
Some inhabitants managed to leave the city, while others stayed behind. When I stand in Pompeii today, I often find myself wondering why. Perhaps they thought their homes would protect them, perhaps they were waiting for relatives, or perhaps they simply did not understand how serious the situation had become. We cannot know for certain.
Later, pyroclastic currents — dense, fast-moving clouds of hot gas, ash and volcanic particles — swept through the area. For those who had remained in Pompeii, there was little possibility of survival. The city was eventually buried beneath metres of volcanic deposits.
It was a catastrophe, but it also created one of archaeology’s great paradoxes: the same eruption that destroyed Pompeii also helped preserve it. Buildings, streets, paintings, household objects and countless details of daily Roman life survived beneath the volcanic material, together with something even more unexpected — the empty spaces left by some of the victims.
The plaster cast technique — Giuseppe Fiorelli
The Pompeii body casts we see today are closely associated with the work of the Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli. During nineteenth-century excavations, archaeologists occasionally encountered strange cavities inside the compact layers of volcanic material. These voids had formed when organic material — wood, plants, animals or human bodies — decomposed after being buried.
The surrounding volcanic deposit had hardened first, so the object itself disappeared while its shape remained. I find this idea extraordinary in itself: the material had vanished, but its absence had retained a physical form.
In 1863, Fiorelli developed an ingenious method for recovering those missing forms. Liquid plaster was carefully poured into the cavities and allowed to harden. Archaeologists then removed the surrounding volcanic material, revealing the shape that had been lost.
The technique could reproduce wooden objects, plant roots and animals, but the human casts transformed the way Pompeii was understood and experienced. They sometimes preserved remarkably small details, including folds of fabric, footwear, objects carried by the victims and elements of their physical appearance.
Fiorelli had found a way of excavating something that was no longer there. To me, that remains one of the most fascinating ideas in the whole story of Pompeii. In a sense, he had found a way to recover an absence.
What the casts tell me
Archaeology usually reconstructs people through the things they leave behind. Walking through Pompeii, I can enter houses, see where people cooked and ate, visit bakeries and workshops and look at thermopolia, the small food counters often described today as the fast-food establishments of the Roman world. I can read graffiti, walk through public buildings, visit baths and begin to understand how the city functioned.
The Pompeii cast bodies tell me something different. They preserve human gestures.
One of the casts our local guide Giovanna draws particular attention to during our visits is commonly referred to as the muleteer. The figure has his hands raised toward his face and, whenever I look at him, the gesture appears almost instinctive, as though he were trying to protect his nose and mouth from the ash and toxic atmosphere around him.
Of course, I cannot know exactly what he was thinking, and I think that distinction matters. It is very easy to invent stories when looking at the casts, to attach emotions to a position or to imagine relationships between figures. Some interpretations may be plausible, but archaeology also teaches us to respect what we do not know.
The power of the muleteer lies precisely there. We know very little about him, yet the gesture needs almost no translation.
The nineteenth-century Italian writer Luigi Settembrini, a contemporary of Fiorelli, understood this emotional power from the beginning. Writing about some of the first casts, he observed:
“It is impossible to see those three deformed figures, and not feel moved. They have been dead for eighteen centuries, but they are human creatures who see themselves in their agony. There it is not art, it is not imitation; but it is their bones, the relics of their flesh and their clothes mixed with plaster: it is the pain of death that regains body and figure … Up to now temples, houses and other objects have been discovered that interest the curiosity of educated people, artists and archaeologists; but now you, my Fiorelli, have discovered human pain, and anyone who is a man feels it.”
Those last words still strike me every time I read them. Pompeii gives us an extraordinary picture of Roman civilization, but the casts remind me that civilization is always made of individual people.
Walking through Pompeii with Giovanna
One of the things I enjoy most about visiting Pompeii is that no two visits are exactly the same. Our route can vary depending on where we enter the archaeological site, what is accessible that day and the time available, and that flexibility makes every visit slightly different.
Sometimes we begin near Piazza Esedra, where the visit may include the Gladiators’ Barracks, the Small Theatre, a frescoed domus and a thermopolium. When time allows, we may also visit the ancient baths or the famous Lupanar.
At other times we enter through Porta Marina Superiore, the ancient gateway for those arriving from the sea. From there, Giovanna may lead us to the Basilica, one of the city’s most important civic buildings, the Temple of Apollo, a bakery and other traces of everyday life.
The real pleasure of Pompeii, however, often lies between the famous monuments. I particularly enjoy the moments when Giovanna stops the group to point out the grooves left by carts, the raised stepping stones, the public fountains, the construction techniques and all those details that would be easy to miss if we were simply moving from one major attraction to another.
Eventually we reach the Forum, the civic and religious heart of the city. With Vesuvius rising behind the ruins, it is one of the views of Pompeii I never tire of seeing. Nearby, in the ancient market area, there are three plaster casts, including the muleteer.
This is often the moment when I feel the tone of the visit change. The city we have been reconstructing through streets, shops, houses and public buildings suddenly acquires a human presence.
Visiting Pompeii on our Amalfi Coast Walking Tour
I include Pompeii in our Amalfi Coast Walking Tour because I believe you cannot fully understand the Bay of Naples and the landscape around Vesuvius without understanding the people who have lived here.
Our tours are based on walking, but for me walking is never simply about covering kilometres. It is a way of slowing down enough to notice things, and Pompeii is a perfect example of that approach.
A street becomes a Roman street because Giovanna explains the cart tracks. A group of stones becomes a pedestrian crossing. A counter becomes a place where somebody stopped for food. A building becomes somebody’s home.
As Giovanna says:
“Walk About Italy guests become particularly fascinated by Pompeii. They are always active and engaged throughout the tour, asking lots of questions and showing genuine curiosity. I have to say, we always have a really wonderful tour together!”
I see exactly what she means. Our guests ask questions, stop to look more carefully and often become interested in details they might never have noticed on their own. That curiosity changes the visit, because there is always another story, another question or another small observation that helps bring the city back to life.
And then there are the casts.
Every time I stand with our guests in front of them, I recognize the same progression: first shock, then silence, then curiosity and finally empathy. I watch people trying to imagine what it meant to be in Pompeii on that day in AD 79, and I find myself doing exactly the same thing.
Perhaps this is Giuseppe Fiorelli’s greatest achievement. His technique did more than reveal the physical forms of some of the victims of Pompeii.
Almost two thousand years later, it allows me — and all of us — to meet them.