As with most Roman provincial towns, several inns and taverns can be found at the entrance to Pompeii, having provided handy shelter to visiting merchants. Then there are other establishments spread across the town. In total, archaeologists have identified some 160 properties that seem to have be...

It's not dissimilar to the circumstances that the dwellers of modern-day Manhattan find themselves in. ... Many of Pompeii's establishments are what we would today call a restaurant with rooms, which the Romans called a hospitium. In various shapes and sizes, there were modest establishments in p...

Then there were: coaching inns (stabula), which were simple bars, sometimes located just outside the metropolis; restaurants known as popina; and the inevitable lupanar (brothels).

Of those eating and drinking establishments, the Inn of Primus was doubtless very popular. Situated on the mai...

Along that street were found shops and workshops offering anything and everything one could imagine. There were builders' merchants, blacksmiths, iron and bronze dealers, arts and crafts stores, shops selling cloth, olive oil, hardware and tools. There was a wine store, a bakery, a barber shop, a...

We know which buildings were bakeries, because the vicious discharge of Vesuvius covered, concealed and preserved not just the mills, ovens and loaves, but also the unground wheat kernels. In the olive oil shops, there are traces of oil in the jugs; amphoras are still stacked in the wine shops. I...

Not far from the forum is the sign of a shop belonging to a local baker Podiscus Pricus, in whose building historians say was a wood-fired oven. There were likely other ovens across Pompeii, too similar to a small one found in the Greco-Roman market area of Naples. Some 4 feet in diameter, these ...

The spirit of some of the Pompeiians who chomped on these pizzas can be seen in the graffiti across town.

On the wall of a bar owned by one Athictus are the words: 'I screwed the barmaid.' A little more poetic and found at the bar of Astylus and Pardalus is: 'Lovers are like bees in that th...