When Vesuvius exploded in 79 CE, Pompeii was covered in ash pretty quickly. The volcano had two sides though, and the smaller town of Herculaneum was also destroyed. It was spared the ash because of the wind direction. However, there was a second blast, this time of pyroclastic material– liquid rock, and it did not spare Herculaneum.
The destruction of Herculaneum did preserve it, in even better condition than Pompeii. The rock cooled hard on the outside, but once digging began, the inside rock is much more crumbly. Household furnishings were left in really wonderful condition– even wood was sometimes preserved, giving a visitor an even deeper realization of what daily life was like.
Herculaneum was a wealthy summer resort and retirement community. It is possible that some owners of the large domici were not at home in October when the eruption happened. We walked into gracious courtyards with mosaic floors and cisterns in the center. The columns for the colonnades are still partially standing in many cases.
The temple in the photos above was given by the sons of a freed slave, and dedicated to Augustus. It was a small but lavish temple, and it was amazing to think that the sons of a freed slave could have accumulated the prosperity for this donation. We learned that such donations were a way for citizens to become more influential, and that slaves were typically freed after the owner died. Freed slaves could be citizens, then.
In the building, above, the shutters were wood and were carbonized and preserved by the blast.
People sort of always knew that Herculaneum had been a town, but no one was interested in cutting through the rock until Charles III of Spain was having a palace built and some Roman marble was discovered. The cheerful news was that he could use the marble for the new palace! (And this is one reason why so many of the beautiful floors of Herculaneum have been removed.) It was not seriously excavated after 1738. Because it was encased in rock, the first excavations were made by tunnelling. Those excavators, we really can’t refer to them as archaeologists, were interested in artifacts, and reclaiming marble. They likely did a tremendous amount of damage.
This rather sad cardboard figure shows children carrying material out of the site in the 1920s or 30s. Probably only about 1/4 of the town has been excavated. The current town sits on top of the one that was destroyed by Vesuvius, so perhaps it will be centuries in the future, if at all, that the rest of Herculaneum is brought to light.
Some artifacts are in a small collection on the site; others have been moved to the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. They are haunting it their really wonderful condition. They are also elegant and still have an appealing style (well, maybe the Medusa fountain is not to my taste.)
The arched boathouses which would have been at the beach of the city contain replicas of 300 skeletons. These were too sad to photograph. Those left behind were young children and teenage girls. A few male skeletons are on the beach, fallen in the midst of the rescue. It’s good to think that many people were able to flee, but horrible to think of the children or infirm who were not able to.
We were driven to the site and shown around by Libby, who has been our local guild in Sorrento. The rest of our group is in Naples today, and since we had spent so long there, we decided to have today for Herculaneum. We are very glad we did and completely in awe of Libby’s depth of knowledge and familiarity with the site. As a bonus, it was really not at all crowded today.
When we returned to Sorrento, we were hungry! We walked to the little fishing village of Marina Grande. It is just below and beside Sorrento, but it was outside the safety of the city walls back in the day.
We keep seeing Vesuvius in different light, as in the middle photo, above.
