How Pompei Comune was built and evolved over time

This town was built on purpose, around a single building, within living memory. That makes it unusual in Italy and explains almost everything about how it looks.

The church came first. Bartolo Longo began restoring a church in disrepair in October 1873; the cornerstone of the larger building was laid on 8 May 1876; and the original building, designed by Antonio Cua, was built between 1876 and 1891, when it was consecrated.

The town followed the church, and he built that too. Modern Pompei was founded in 1881 after the building of the shrine — the sequence is the point. The shrine's own account is specific about what went up around the construction site: houses for the workers, the telegraph, the railway station, a small hospital, and the meteorological and geodynamic observatories. That is not a settlement that accreted around a church; it is a town specified and provisioned by one man.

Then it was given a landmark. The 80-metre bell tower, designed by Aristide Leonori, was built between 1912 and 1925. On flat ground 14 metres above the sea it is visible for a long way, which is exactly what a pilgrimage town wants.

And finally it was drawn on a map. The comune was constituted on 29 March 1928 from territory contributed by Torre Annunziata, Scafati, Boscoreale and Gragnano, and the shrine was enlarged to basilica status in 1939. A town assembled out of four neighbours' land, fifty years after its first building went up.