2-368-668 - Samuel Magal/Sites & Photos/Heritage Images

A building in Pompeii, Italy. This building was constructed in the opus atericium style; a Roman form of construction in which coarse-laid brickwork was used to face a core of opus caementicium. It was the dominant form of wall construction in the imperial era. Pompeii is a ruined and partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. Along with Herculaneum, its sister city, Pompeii was destroyed, and completely buried, during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning two days in 79 AD.