The other Vesuvius victim — better preserved than Pompeii, with wooden furniture and intact upper storeys
Herculaneum was a prosperous Roman seaside resort buried by the same 79 CE Vesuvius eruption that destroyed Pompeii, but by a different mechanism — while Pompeii was smothered in ash and pumice, Herculaneum was sealed by a 20-metre-deep flow of superheated volcanic mud that hardened to rock, preserving organic materials impossible to find at Pompeii: wooden staircases, furniture, food in jars, papyrus scrolls. The site is smaller but arguably more evocative — two-storey houses stand intact, mosaics gleam as if freshly laid, and the ancient shoreline, where hundreds of skeletons were discovere…
Herculaneum was a Roman town of some 4,000 people, wealthier per capita than Pompeii and known as a resort for the upper class. When Vesuvius erupted on 24 August 79 CE, Herculaneum was first engulfed by a pyroclastic surge — a superheated cloud of gas and volcanic matter travelling at 100km/h — and then buried under deep volcanic mud. The mud hardened to form a kind of time capsule. Excavations began in 1738 (before Pompeii), but the depth of burial and the modern city of Ercolano built on top have made only a fraction of the ancient town accessible. The Villa of the Papyri, still mostly une…