Pompeii.

A delightful example of the 1832 first edition S.D.U.K. plan of Pompeii, Italy. Pompeii was utterly destroyed by the eruption of the volcano Mt. Vesuvius, in A.D. 79 and remained buried under ash until its rediscovery in 1748.
Although excavations had been in process for almost 60 years when this map was printed, very little of this ancient Roman city had actually been revealed. The excavated portions of Pompeii, as seen to the right hand quadrants of the plan, drew the attention of the world as more and more of the fantastically preserved pleasure city was unearthed.
An inset map in the lower left hand corner shows Vesuvius and surrounds. Another inset set in the 'unexcavated' portions of Pompeii, shows the layout of a typical Pompeii villa. A decorative view along the bottom of the map shows the city, as it must have appeared to 19th century travellers.
Above this view are basic artistic renderings of important Pompeii Buildings.

The Society was founded by John, Earl Russell, and Henry Brougham, later Lord Chancellor of England in 1827. The Society's main aim was to encourage universal literacy by publishing numbers of books of good quality, that would be affordable to the masses.
These delightful town plans were published in perhaps the grandest of the Society's publications - their atlas entitled Maps Of The Society For The Diffusion Of Useful Knowledge, first issued by Baldwin and Cradock, and then re-issued by other publishers, including Chapman and Hall and latterly Edward Stanford.