wished to excavate the buried town systematically, from west to east. In some periods of their influence, they employed as many as 1500 workmen, and this concentration of effort resulted in the Foro’s, the Terme’s, the Casa di Pansa’s, the Casa di Sallustio’s, and the Casa del Chirurgo’s excavation.

With the return of the Bourbon king Ferdinand I to Naples, this method of organizing the excavations continued, but there were fewer funds available to back the project. By 1860, much of the western portion of the town had been excavated.

Giuseppe Fiorelli directed the Pompeii excavation from 1863 to 1875 – introducing an entirely new system for the project; rather than uncovering the streets first, he imposed a system of uncovering the houses from the top down, in order to excavate the houses from the ground floor up — a much more efficient way of preserving everything that was discovered.

During these excavations of the site, occasional voids in the ash layer had been found that contained human remains. It was Fiorelli who realized these were spaces left by the decomposed bodies, and so devised the technique of injecting plaster into them to recreate the forms of Vesuvius’s victims. This technique is still in use today, with a clear resin now used instead of plaster, as it is more durable, and does not destroy the bones, allowing further analysis.

–

In this way the data collected during the excavations could be used to help with the restoration of the ancient buildings and of their interiors – although the most important wall paintings and mosaics still continued to be stripped and transported to Naples.

Fiorelli also took the topography of the town and divided it into a system of ‘regiones’, ‘insulae’ and ‘domus’ – and he developed the use of plaster casts to recreate the forms of plants and human bodies that had been covered by the volcanic ash, and had then left a hole – shaped in the form of the plant or person – in that ash after putrefaction.

Michele Ruggiero, Giulio De Petra, Ettore Pais and Antonio Sogliano, continued Fiorelli’s work in the following years, and during the last 20 years of the century began to restore the roofs of the houses with wood and tiles – in order to protect the remaining wall paintings and mosaics inside.

During these years many famous scholars came to study the remains of Po