Photographs of Herculaneum

Click on an image to see the full picture

After the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, the town of Herculaneum was buried under approximately 20m (50-60 feet) of lava, mud and ash. It laid hidden and nearly intact for more than 1600 years. In the meantime the modern towns of Resina (re-named Ercolano in 1969) and Portici grew up over the site and Herculaneum wasn't discovered until some workers digging a well in 1709 dug through to the site. It was explored by means of tunnels dug into and through the buildings until 1828 when open-air excavasions were authorised. In recent times excavations started again on a more modern and scientific basis fully uncovering a small section of the town but it was found that the earlier tunnelling had damaged the structure of much of the surviving buildings. The site now covers 4.5 hectares of a city that is estimated to cover about 20 hectares. The remainder of the city remains buried under the existing towns.