After the eruption

The effect of the eruption was evidently totally traumatic, as is shown by the failure to reoccupy the sites of the cities destroyed. It was normal practice to rebuild the cities of this region after even the most massive earthquakes; but neither Herculaneum nor Pompeii was reoccupied.

Instead, the site of Pompeii was riddled with tunnels by explorers, not by modern explorers as is often imagined, but by the Romans themselves after the eruption. Room after room of the city's buildings had holes hacked through the walls by tunnellers and though Pompeii has richer finds than any other Roman site, it is a city already extensively sacked by looters.

The cities on the north of the Bay swiftly recovered, and Puteoli continued to be a significant commercial centre. The Bay of Naples continued to attract rich holidaymakers, but never again regained the massive levels of popularity of the two centuries before the disaster, the time when it had been the playground of many rich senators and emperors.

It was not until the 18th century, when Naples flourished under the Bourbon kings, that the villas of the rich courtiers and ambassadors of that time brought a new flowering to the region. It was at this period that the aristocrats of Europe, as they progressed on their Grand Tours, made the Bay of Naples and its hidden Roman treasures a focus of international fascination.