Pompeii: Sin City

Pompeii: Sin City takes viewers on a guided tour of one of the world's storied archaeological wonders, but it does so through a contemporary lens. The film gathers experts, historians, and cultural voices to examine how Pompeii's ruins, frescoes, and everyday remnants still speak across millennia. Rather than a straight excavation diary, it stitches together interviews, site imagery, and archival material to ask what the city teaches us about daily life, disaster, memory, and the way civilizations are remembered. The tone remains curious and accessible, inviting non specialists to consider how a single city carved into a hillside can continue to shape art, tourism, and our sense of history.

Directed by Pappi Corsicato, Pompeii Sin City brings together Jacopo Magri and Andrea Rizzoli as creators to explore the site’s layered history. The documentary blends on location footage, expert interviews, and archival images to reframe Pompeii beyond tourism. It was released in 2020 and features Isabella Rossellini, Darius Arya, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Ellen O'Gorman, and Catherine Edwards as themselves.

Box office data for Pompeii: Sin City is not widely reported and there is no widely released worldwide gross available. The film appears to have had a limited footprint typical of niche documentaries, often circulated through festivals and streaming platforms.

By foregrounding famous figures like Isabella Rossellini and scholars, the film helps bring Pompeii into contemporary conversation and classrooms. It mirrors a broader trend of using high profile voices to experiment with how ancient sites intersect with film, art, tourism, and public memory.

Reception appears mixed, with a modest audience score of 5.5 out of 10 from five votes, suggesting some viewers connect with the film's reflective pace while others want a sharper narrative. Thematically, it foregrounds memory and ruins as living conversations rather than inert relics, asking how a city frozen in ash continues to illuminate daily life, scholarship, and the story we tell about civilization.