Pompei Comune historical timeline

Pompei's history has a gap in it eighteen centuries wide, and the two halves have almost nothing to do with each other.

The Roman city ended on a known date. Pompeii was a city near Naples, buried under 4 to 6 metres of volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. What that preserved is the thing UNESCO cites: the only archaeological site in the world that provides a complete picture of an ancient Roman city — a snapshot of Roman life, frozen at the moment it was buried.

Then nothing, for a very long time. There was no continuous town here. The modern settlement is not a survival of the Roman one, and anyone arriving expecting a medieval centre layered over antiquity will not find one.

The modern town begins with one man's conversion. Bartolo Longo (1841–1926) was an Italian lawyer who, by his own account, was ordained a Satanic priest after study and several spiritual experiences during the 1860s, before converting back to Catholicism around 1871. He inaugurated a confraternity in October 1873 and began restoring a church in disrepair; in 1875 he received a painting of Our Lady of the Rosary; and the cornerstone of a larger church was laid on 8 May 1876.

The town grew around the building site. Modern Pompei was founded in 1881 after the building of the shrine. The church was consecrated in May 1891; the 80-metre bell tower followed between 1912 and 1925; and the structure was enlarged to basilica status in 1939.

It became a comune in living memory. Pompei was constituted on 29 March 1928, from land contributed by Torre Annunziata, Scafati, Boscoreale and Gragnano.

And its founder became a saint last year. Longo died in Pompei on 5 October 1926, was beatified by John Paul II on 26 October 1980, and was canonised by Pope Leo XIV on 19 October 2025. His body lies in a glass reliquary in the shrine he built.