Living among ruins

Most CWA readers will have visited some ruined cities for one reason or another; the majority of us will have let ourselves be fascinated by imagining how life in the past might have been, and how much or how little it would have resembled the modern equivalent, with its venues for leisure and work; for sleep and entertainment; for labour and exploitation; for aesthetically pleasing and artistic expressions. In Europe, probably the most famous ruined ancient city is Pompeii, closely followed by Herculaneum, both situated in the region of the Bay of Naples. Today, what makes these partly excavated urban landscapes different from a lot of other ruined cities is that they were buried instantane