Box Bogie

A group of human victim corpses of the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius

This is a much smaller site than Pompeii, mainly because it is less accessible. It lies about 27 meters below present ground level, and much of it no one is sure how much extends beneath the modern town of Ercolano (Resina). Unlike Pompeii, Herculaneum was engulfed during Vesuvius eruption by an avalanche of mud and lava that filled every nook and cranny like thick soup and then hardened to the consistency of concrete. Everything embedded in this rocklike substance had to be chipped free.

But for that very reason the houses here are better preserved than in Pompeii. For more than a century after it was discovered by a well-digger in 1710, Herculaneum remained underground. It was explored by means of tunnels carved through the ruins. The British architect Robert Adam, who visited the digs in 1755, wrote, “We saw earthen vases and marble pavements just discovered… and some feet of a table that were dug up the day before we were there. The subterranean town… is now exactly like a coal mine worked by galley slaves.”

Herculaneum site view from above

Today in the spacious private houses of Herculaneum you begin to sense what the Romans meant by gracious living. To be sure, the interiors have been stripped of most of their decoration and reduced to raw space. Gone are the rich marble panels that sheathed the walls, the fine stucco surfacing on columns and the delicate reflections of still water in shallow pools and basins. Innumerable fine paintings, sculpture and other household objects were carried off by early excavators and are now in the National Archeological Museum in Naples. But you can still imagine the people, the toga-clad elders, the mothers with children, for whom these spaces had the pleasing familiarity of home.