Pompeii: Rebirth of Italy’s dead city that nearly died again; Frances D’Emilio; AP 

In a few horrible hours, Pompeii was turned from a vibrant city into an ash-embalmed wasteland, smothered by a furious volcanic eruption in A.D. 79. Then in this century, the excavated Roman city appeared alarmingly close to a second death, assailed by decades of neglect, mismanagement and scant systematic maintenance of the heavily visited ruins.

Source: Pompeii: Rebirth of Italy’s dead city that nearly died again