In 79 AD, 17-year-old Gaius Plin­ius Cae­cil­ius Secun­dus, known as Pliny the Younger, gazed across the Bay of Naples from his vaca­tion home in Mis­enum and watched Mount Vesu­vius erupt. “Dark­ness fell, not the dark of a moon­less or cloudy night,” Pliny wrote in his eye­wit­ness account — the only sur­viv­ing such doc­u­ment — “but as if the lamp had been put out in a dark room.” Unbe­knownst to Pliny and his famous uncle, Pliny the Elder, admi­ral of the Roman navy and revered nat­u­ral­ist, hun­dreds of lives were also snuffed out by lava, clouds of smoke and ash, and tem­per­a­tures in the hun­dreds of degrees Fahren­heit. The Elder Pliny launched ships to attempt an evac­u­a­tion. In the morn­ing, he was found dead, like­ly from asphyx­i­a­tion, along with over two thou­sand res­i­dents of Pom­peii and Her­cu­la­neum.

When the buried town was first unearthed, a new cycle of wit­ness, death, and res­ur­rec­tion began. “Since its redis­cov­ery in the mid-18th cen­tu­ry,” writes Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, “the site has host­ed a tire­less suc­ces­sion of trea­sure hunters and arche­ol­o­gists,” not to men­tion tourists — start­ing with aris­to­crat­ic gen­tle­men on their Grand Tour of Europe. In 1787, Goethe climbed Vesu­vius and gazed into its crater. “He record­ed with dis­ap­point­ment that the fresh­est lava was already five days old, and that the vol­cano nei­ther belched flame nor pelt­ed him with stones,” writes Amelia Soth in an arti­cle about “Pom­peii Mania” among the Roman­tics, a pas­sion that cul­mi­nat­ed in Edward Bul­w­er-Lyt­ton’s 1834 pot­boil­er, The Last Days of Pom­peii, “hands-down the most pop­u­lar nov­el of the age.”

Bulwer-Lytton’s book “had such a dra­mat­ic impact on how we think about Pom­peii,” the Get­ty writes, that the muse­um named an exhi­bi­tion after it that fea­tures — unlike so many oth­er his­to­ries — Pom­pei­i’s 20th cen­tu­ry “apoc­a­lypse”: an Allied bomb­ing raid in the autumn of 1943 that dam­aged near­ly every part of the site, includ­ing “some of Pom­pei­i’s most famous mon­u­ments, as well as its muse­um.” As Nigel Pol­lard shows in his book Bomb­ing Pom­peii, over 160 Allied bombs hit Pom­peii in August and Sep­tem­ber. Few tourists who now flock to the site know how much of the ruins have been rebuilt since then. “Only recent­ly have the lit­er­a­ture and the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty paid due atten­tion to these dra­mat­ic events, which con­sti­tute a fun­da­men­tal water­shed in the mod­ern his­to­ry of the site,” writes arche­ol­o­gist Sil­via Berte­sa­go.

A Pliny of his time (an Elder, giv­en his decades of sci­en­tif­ic accom­plish­ment), Pom­pei­i’s super­in­ten­dent, arche­ol­o­gist Amedeo Maiuri, “accel­er­at­ed the pro­tec­tion of build­ings and move­able items” in advance of the bomb­ing raids. But “who will save mon­u­ments, hous­es and paint­ings from the fury of the bom­bard­ments?” he wrote. Maiuri had warned of the com­ing destruc­tion, and when false infor­ma­tion iden­ti­fied the slopes of Vesu­vius as a Ger­man hide­out, the longest-run­ning arche­o­log­i­cal exca­va­tion in the world became “a real tar­get of war.… The first bomb­ing of Pom­peii took place on the night of August 24 1943.… Between August 30 and the end of Sep­tem­ber, sev­er­al oth­er raids fol­lowed by both day and night.… No part of the exca­va­tions was com­plete­ly spared.”

Maiuri chron­i­cled the destruc­tion, writ­ing:

It was thus that from 13 to 26 Sep­tem­ber Pom­peii suf­fered its sec­ond and more seri­ous ordeal, bat­tered by one or more dai­ly attacks: dur­ing the day fly­ing low with­out fear of anti-air­craft retal­i­a­tion; at night with all the smoke and bright­ness of flares […]. Dur­ing those days no few­er than 150 bombs fell with­in the exca­va­tion area, scat­tered across the site and con­cen­trat­ed where mil­i­tary tar­gets were thought to be.

Him­self wound­ed in his left foot by a bomb, Maiuri helped draw up a list of 1378 destroyed items and over 100 dam­aged build­ings. Hasty, emer­gency rebuild­ing in the years to fol­low would lead to the use of “exper­i­men­tal mate­ri­als” like rein­forced con­crete, which “would lat­er prove incom­pat­i­ble with the orig­i­nal mate­ri­als” and itself require restora­tion and repair. The ruins of Pom­peii were rebuilt and res­ur­rect­ed after they were near­ly destroyed a sec­ond time by fire from the sky — this time entire­ly an act of humankind. But the necrop­o­lis would have its revenge. The fol­low­ing year, Vesu­vius erupt­ed, destroy­ing near­ly all of the 80 B‑25 bombers and the Allied air­field at the foot of the moun­tain.

In the video above, you can learn more about the bomb­ing of Pom­peii. See pho­tographs of the destruc­tion at Pom­peii Com­mit­ment and at the Get­ty Muse­um, which fea­tures pho­tos of Pom­pei­ian sites destroyed by bomb­ing side-by-side with col­or images of the rebuilt sites today. These images are dra­mat­ic, enough to make us pay atten­tion to the seams and joints if we have the chance to vis­it, or revis­it, the famous arche­o­log­i­cal site in the future. And we might want to ask our guide if we can see not only the ruins of the nat­ur­al dis­as­ter, but also the mul­ti­ple undet­o­nat­ed bombs from the “apoc­a­lypse” of World War II.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

Pom­peii Rebuilt: A Tour of the Ancient City Before It Was Entombed by Mount Vesu­vius

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ruins of Pom­peii

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

One of the first things tourists learn about the great Pyra­mids of Giza is how they are not far away in some remote loca­tion. Turns out they’re just pho­tographed that way with the West­ern Desert as back­drop. Turn around and you’ll see not just the bustling city of Cairo, but a freakin’ golf course. The next thing tourists learn is that there’s a lot of walk­ing if you want to take in both pyra­mids and the Sphinx. Hope you packed some good shoes!

Or you could sit back and watch this one-hour-and-50-minute walk­ing tour, shot in 4K, on a chilly Jan­u­ary morn­ing in 2019. There’s not many tourists around for most of it, bet­ter to instill a sense of won­der and oth­er­ness as you encounter these 4,500 year old struc­tures.

With its relax­ing bob­bing-head cam­era and its immer­sive field record­ing soundtrack—headphones are recommended—the video tours the entire ancient area, start­ing with the Mor­tu­ary Tem­ple of Khafre, then mov­ing to the two main pyra­mids, the ceme­tery, the small­er pyra­mid of Menkau­re, and end­ing on the Sphinx. There’s even room for a horse ride, although as it’s sped up, it turns out to be rather com­i­cal. It’s also a delight to hear the occa­sion­al camel make them­selves known.

Open Cul­ture has writ­ten about the Pyra­mids of Giza sev­er­al times. We’ve linked to the mas­sive Dig­i­tal Giza Project; shown a 3‑D recon­struc­tion of what the pyra­mids looked like when they were orig­i­nal­ly built (they were gleam­ing white, for one thing); fol­lowed a 3‑D tour *inside* the pyra­mid that is quite spine-tin­gling; and high­light­ed an intro­duc­to­ry course of Giza and Egyp­tol­ogy. The only remain­ing of the Sev­en Won­ders of the Ancient World con­tin­ues to inspire a new gen­er­a­tion of archae­ol­o­gists, and this walk­ing tour is as close as your brows­er can get to being there. ProWalk Tours’ YouTube site also offers many oth­er pleas­ant walks, from the ancient to the mod­ern. They’re worth check­ing out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 4,000-Year-Old Stu­dent ‘Writ­ing Board’ from Ancient Egypt (with Teacher’s Cor­rec­tions in Red)

Won­ders of Ancient Egypt: A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia

A 3,000-Year-Old Painter’s Palette from Ancient Egypt, with Traces of the Orig­i­nal Col­ors Still In It

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

His­to­ry is selec­tive. Or, rather, it’s select­ed by those in pow­er for their own uses. Nowhere do we see this more than in nation­al­ist re-imag­in­ings of an impe­r­i­al past, whether it be British, Roman, or, in the case of mod­ern Turkey, Ottoman. “Much has been writ­ten,” notes Time magazine’s Alan Mikhail, “about [Turk­ish pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s attempts to ‘res­ur­rect’ the Ottoman Empire or to style him­self a sul­tan.” Erdogan’s turn to hard­line Islam has been inspired by one par­tic­u­lar sul­tan, Selim I, under whose rule, “the Ottoman Empire grew from a strong region­al pow­er to a gar­gan­tu­an glob­al empire.” Mikhail com­pares Selim to anoth­er his­tor­i­cal fig­ure famed for sin­gle-mind­ed intol­er­ance: Andrew Jack­son, a hero of the for­mer Unit­ed States pres­i­dent.

Erdogan’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the Ottoman Empire some­times seems to have more in com­mon with ear­ly Euro­pean ideas about the empire than its ideas about itself. Euro­pean writ­ers in the 16th and 17th cen­tu­ry linked the Ottomans with Islamist repres­sion, an Ori­en­tal­ist take on Turk­ish pow­er as a dan­ger­ous yet seduc­tive new ene­my. “The glo­ri­ous Empire of the Turkes, the present ter­rour of the world,” wrote Richard Knolles in his 1603 Gen­er­all His­to­rie of the Turkes, “hath amongst oth­er things noth­ing in it more won­der­ful or strange, than the poore begin­ning of itselfe….” These same sen­ti­ments were echoed in 1631 by Eng­lish writer John Speed, who described the “sud­den advance­ment” of the Empire as “a ter­rour to the whole world.” Like­wise, Andrew Moore in 1659 wrote of “this bar­barous Nation, the worlds present ter­rour,” a nation with a “small & obscure begin­ning.”

All empires have small begin­nings. In the case of the Ottomans, the sto­ry begins with Osman I, a trib­al leader of obscure ori­gins who found­ed the Empire in Ana­to­lia some 300 years before the authors above put pen to paper. (The word “Ottoman” derives from his name.) A series of con­quests fol­lowed, the most dra­mat­ic occur­ring in 1453 when Mehmed the Con­quer­er entered Con­stan­tino­ple, effec­tive­ly end­ing the Byzan­tine Empire, an event you can see high­light­ed in the video above, an “entire his­to­ry of the Ottoman Empire” — all 600 years of it — from 1299 to 1922. Such an extend­ed peri­od of con­quest and influ­ence led, of course, to a vari­ety of views about the nature of the Ottomans, not least among the Ottomans them­selves, who saw them­selves not as Mus­lim invaders of Europe but as the right­ful heirs of Rome. Indeed, edu­cat­ed Ottomans referred to them­selves not as “Turks,” a word for the peas­antry, but as Rūmī, “Roman.”

In many ways, the Ottomans — bloody con­quests, slav­ery, geno­cides and all — took after the Romans. “Obvi­ous­ly they saw val­ue in spread­ing reli­gion,” says David Lesch, pro­fes­sor of Mid­dle East his­to­ry at Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty in San Anto­nio. But they did not share the nar­ra­tive of a “clash of civ­i­liza­tions” favored by Euro­pean writ­ers of the time, and cer­tain revi­sion­ists today. “The Ottoman Empire saw itself as very much, even more so a Euro­pean empire than a Mid­dle East­ern empire. And they took a very tol­er­ant view toward non-Mus­lims since for most of the Ottoman Empire — espe­cial­ly when it was at its largest — most of its pop­u­la­tion was non-Mus­lim. It was in fact Chris­t­ian.” The obser­va­tion brings to mind the cen­tral claim of Turk­ish schol­ar Namık Kemal’s influ­en­tial essay “Europe Knows Noth­ing about the Ori­ent,” in which he writes that Euro­pean schol­ars have failed to under­stand the “true char­ac­ter such as ours, which is so close to them that … it might as well be touch­ing their eye­lash­es.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Down­load Thou­sands of Ottoman-Era Pho­tographs That Have Been Dig­i­tized and Put Online

The Rise and Fall of West­ern Empires Visu­al­ized Through the Art­ful Metaphor of Cell Divi­sion

Watch the Rise and Fall of the British Empire in an Ani­mat­ed Time-Lapse Map ( 519 A.D. to 2014 A.D.)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness