Beijing – “The Three Days of Pompeii”, a trip through time with Alberto Angela

It was the 24th of October of 79 AD, apparently a Friday like any other in Pompeii, except that at 1 p.m. the nearby Vesuvius started releasing an amount of energy equal to that of 50,000 atomic bombs in less than 20 hours, burying the city under a scorching fallout of ashes and gas and suffocating it under six metres of pumice stone. In his book “The Three Days of Pompeii” (Rizzoli, 2014), Alberto Angela narrates the biggest tragedy of antiquity by following the last hours of some of Pompeii’s inhabitants who really existed. After the great success recorded in Italy (with 135,000 copies sold in only one week), the book will shortly also be published in China by the China Social Science Press publishing house. For the occasion, at 6 p.m. on Jan. 28, Mr Angela will attend an event at the Italian Cultural Institute (IIC) in Beijing in which, in addition to presenting the book, he will guide the audience to ancient times through a documentary produced especially for the IIC by the editorial office of the “Ulisse” TV science programme.