Live at Pompeii emerged from a series of teaching and research programs at the Politecnico of Milan focused, over recent years, on the ancient cities of Pompeii, Paestum, and Herculaneum. Through the tools of architectural design, these programs have explored the relationship between ruins and the contemporary city. In the case of Pompeii, this question takes on particular relevance: not only because the ancient city is among the world’s most complex and visited archaeological sites, but above all because its perimeter now coincides with an unstable threshold, where the boundary between archaeological space and inhabited territory becomes porous and continually negotiable.