Life in Pompeii was stopped in its tracks.
Today, excavations of this once booming city
offer the best look anywhere at Ancient Roman life.
For archeologists, Pompeii was a shake-and-bake windfall.
Ancient Rome controlled the entire Mediterranean sea.
That made it a kind of free-trade zone.
And Pompeii was an important port town.
It was big -- 20,000 people.
It was an important commercial center.
Imagine this square just busy with market activity.
And, because it was a port,
it was a kind of a sailors' quarter,
and that meant it was fun --
lots of bars, baths, brothels, restaurants,
and places of entertainment.
The main square, or forum,
was Pompeii's commercial, religious, and political center.
The curia housed the government.
It was built of brick and mortar -- a Roman invention.
It was originally faced with gleaming marble.
The basilica, or law court, was nearby.
Here you see the basilica floor plan
that medieval churches adopted after Christianity became legal.
In good Roman style, the city was well-organized,
with a grid street plan contained within its walls.
Remains of homes give a glimpse into Roman lifestyles.
The House of Vettii, the home of a wealthy merchant,
shows the typical layout of a mansion.
Its colonnaded atrium,
with formal garden and water flowing to give freshness,
was ringed by colorfully frescoed rooms.
For a better understanding of life at Pompeii,
Italian archeologist Gaetano Manfredi
is taking us on a walk.
Pompeii's impressive baths were just past the gymnasium.
After working out, Romans would relax, be pampered,
and enjoy the social scene in a public bath.
This was the tepidarium.
So, people coming from gymnasium after sport,
they were massaged by the slaves.
Inside the niches all around,
there were oils, creams, perfumes for the body massages.
And part of the ceiling is still original,
and so we can see how beautiful decorated
it was once on the ceiling.
They were massaged by the slaves
25, 30 minutes before going to the sauna.
Because tepidarium means "lukewarm bath."
After the tepidarium, there was the calidarium,
which was the hot bath.
Beside this wall,
there was a room where the slaves made the fire.
The hot air went underneath the double floor,
because this floor is supported by little columns,
and the hot air went between the double walls.
There was a circulation of hot air,
and just when everything was really hot,
they opened the water fountain over here.
The water slowly fell on the floor --
the floor was hot -- and this produces steam.
The last stop was the frigidarium,
the cold bath, eh?
As we still do today,
after the sauna, to harden the muscles
and for the body circulation, the cold bath.
Steves: Water was abundant in this well-plumbed city.
Fountains provided a social center at intersections,
and a steady stream of water
flushed the chariot-rutted streets clean.
So, why the stones in the street here?
Well, there was always water flowing along the roads,
and washing the roads,
so that's why the sidewalk all over, and the stepping stones.
So the pedestrians walk across and not get wet?
Yes, to the crossroad, avoiding wet feet.
Very smart.
Steves: While the site is evocative,
the horrors of that day in 79 A.D. Are hard to imagine.
Manfredi: Thousands of people died in this eruption.
Here we have the casts of those people.
You know, during the excavations,
sometimes the archeologists
felt under the volcanic materials
some empty spaces left by the decomposition of bodies.
And so what they did,
they injected the liquid plaster in these empty spaces.
The liquid plaster took the form of the previous bodies,
and when it dried up,
the archeologists cleaned all the ash away
and it appear, the body, in the same position
the man was when he died 2,000 years ago.
One day a thriving city, the next day...this.