A collection of ancient graffiti from Pompeii, Herculaneum

Explore a database of ancient graffiti

Take a look at thousands of pieces of graffiti from the walls of Herculaneum and Pompeii, including name tags, crude jokes, and crude drawings. The database, maintained by classical scholars, allows you to explore maps of the cities and images of the original inscriptions.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

Archaeologists discovered over 11,000 examples of graffiti in ancient Pompeii

Residents drew various figures and announcements on homes, temples, and walls, much of it preserved by volcanic ash. While some were clearly intended to be artistic, scholars have noted that the ancient graffiti has more in common with social media than with the tags and murals we associate today with the art form.

A reading of ancient Rome's best graffiti

Graffiti has been surprisingly common throughout history, and even the grandeur of ancient Rome's walls wasn't spared. This clever and funny video reads through some of the more notable messages relayed via graffiti in ancient Rome, from tidbits of wisdom like "A small problem gets larger if you ignore it" to more unsavory observations of lovers, friends, and enemies.

Explore the collection of vivid frescoes Pompeii left behind

This gallery showcases remarkably preserved frescoes depicting food, daily life, landscapes, and myth. Tools abandoned during the eruption reveal how ancient artists worked, offering insight into Pompeii’s visual culture before Vesuvius buried the city in ash.

Ancient Romans sometimes lobbed insults through graffiti

Graffiti was used to communicate ideas, offer advice, and, not unlike the internet, talk some trash. That was especially true with tourists, who sometimes scrawled messages on the pyramids, including one person who complained, "I can not read the hierogylphics." In response, someone replied, "Why do you care that you can not read the hieroglyphics? I do not understand your concern."

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

A 101 on Pompeii

Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 CE preserved an entire Roman city in ash, leaving future archaeologists an unprecedented gift: the most complete glimpse to date into the daily life of ancient Romans. The encyclopedia entry, originally written by one of the site’s leading archaeological scholars, is a one-stop shop for all things Pompeii, including what several generations of archaeologists have discovered over centuries of excavation.

'Graffiti' comes from the Italian for 'a scribbling'

The word was first used in 1851 to describe the ancient inscriptions on Pompeii's walls. "Graffiti" is the plural form of "graffito," which means "a scribbling."

A nearby town proved even more archaeologically important than Pompeii

Herculaneum, buried under five times more ash than Pompeii, was sealed so completely that food, furniture, and entire buildings survived. This BBC documentary reveals how its discoveries have transformed scholars' understanding of the diets, work, and social mobility of ordinary Romans.

See haunting images of the plaster casts of Pompeii’s victims

The plaster casts preserve victims’ final moments in striking detail—from their poses to the expressions frozen on their faces. This piece explains how 19th-century archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli devised the method long after the bodies had decomposed.

Pompeii’s ruins expose the brutal realities of Rome’s sex trade

Drawing on graffiti, slave collars, brothel art, and the story of “Eutychis, a Greek lass with sweet ways,” this piece reconstructs the violent, coercive world of Pompeii’s enslaved prostitutes—and how their owners controlled, renamed, and exploited them.

See unused gladiator helmets discovered in Pompeii

Early excavations at Pompeii uncovered pristine gladiator helmets and armor, showing no signs of combat wear, which were likely used only in ceremonial processions. Many are now displayed at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

The lifestyles of early humans

For 2.5 million years, humans lived on Earth without leaving a written record of their lives—but they left behind other kinds of remains and artifacts.

Wildlife use Rome's sprawling archaeological sites as urban havens

The Italian capital features some of the world's most famous monuments as the inheritor of ancient Rome's grandeur. This photo essay explores the city's vibrant collection of wildlife, including long-concealed native crabs, peregrine falcons, and the beaver-like nutria.

An immersive curation of the world's rock art

A living archive of humanity’s ancient art and symbols, our shared history that is embedded as rock art and cave art in the landscape

Why is there an archaeologist in my trash can?

Archaeologists have always been interested in rubbish—sites such as waste heaps, middens, and latrines can be some of the richest places to learn about the human past. But the type of rubbish we're leaving behind is changing, and much of it now...

Ancient ghost stories appeared in texts like 'The Odyssey'

Sharing ghost tales has been around for centuries. Ancient Mesopotamia, Rome, and Greece each had their own chilling stories about encountering spirits. Find mentions of specters in some of history’s most famous writings like the "Epic of Gilgamesh" and "The Odyssey."

The Etruscans laid the foundations for Roman civilization

When we put aside the myths and legends about Rome's founding, one group takes center stage: the Etruscans. This now-vanished, Greek-like culture laid the foundations of Rome's alphabet, art, and more. Etruscan culture dominated northern Italy in the centuries before the Roman Republic.

Reimagine damaged cultural sites from around the world

NeoMam art studios created animated GIFs restoring six endangered World Heritage sites to their original glory. These include Hatra, a fortified city in Iraq, and Nan Madol, an island site in the northwest Pacific. These landmarks are designated as at risk due to threats like earthquakes and conflict in the regions. Enjoy some of the beautifully restored landmarks with this brief article.

A collection of ancient Mayan glyphs and pictographs

The Maya had a syllabic and pictorial writing style that featured many incredibly detailed glyphs. Click here to check out this ancient writing style (and maybe test out their related phonetic sounds).

Some of the oldest photographs in the world

Scholar and artist Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey ventured around the Mediterranean with some of the earliest photographic equipment in tow. He captured hundreds of images during his tour of Rome, Venice, Cairo, and more, in what would become...

One graffiti artist turned a train tunnel into his gallery

Chris Pape, also known as Freedom, began exploring a tunnel under Manhattan's Riverside Park when he was a kid. As he grew more involved with graffiti, he turned its walls into a massive art project, one that reflected both the history of graffiti and the people who made the tunnel their home.

Why only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world still exists

Greek writers recorded lists of great structures that were later codified by Renaissance writers. The definitive list includes the Colossus of Rhodes, the Giza Pyramid (the only existing one today), the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

The artwork at Burning Man is impressive and transient

Huge sculptures, mutant vehicles, concert stages, the Man, and other spectacles created at Burning Man each year are often destroyed by the end of the event. If they aren't burned, they'll often be repurposed or trashed.

The underground cities of the Byzantine Empire

This TED-Ed video explores the mysterious cave cities of Cappadocia. Although their oldest sections may go back to the Bronze Age, most of these subterranean complexes were excavated during the Byzantine period, when the locals went underground to take shelter from Arab raiders. Monasteries were also cut into pinnacles of the local tufa, and decorated with frescoes that have often survived to the present.

How 'the Iceman' got his tattoos remains a mystery

Ötzi the Iceman, discovered in 1991, is one of the oldest human mummies ever found—and his 61 tattoos remain a mystery. This explainer looks at how researchers believe the tattoos were made, what their placement suggests about ancient medicine and culture, and why we’re still piecing together their true purpose today.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is not a pristine document, and even features a smudged anonymous handprint in the bottom left corner.

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

Volcanoes 'die' when their supply of magma runs out, if they are shifted away from their underlying magma reservoir, or if they get clogged by collapsing or their magma cooling back into rock.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

Tattoos remain visible on your skin thanks to immune cells called macrophages

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

Poison ivy's characteristic rash is caused by an allergic response to an oily compound in the plant called urushiol.

Artificial coral reefs have been 3D printed from nontoxic, biodegradable terracotta clay, which coral polyps have used as a foundation for rebuilding marine ecosystems.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

Human-to-human transmission of hantavirus remains extremely rare, so the 2026 hantavirus cruise ship outbreak doesn't mean we're facing a COVID-style pandemic risk.