Herculaneum is the Roman seaside town at the western foot of Mount Vesuvius, in today's Ercolano on the Bay of Naples in Campania, southern Italy, that was buried with Pompeii in the eruption of 79 CE. The difference is in how it was buried. Pompeii lies under 4 to 6 m of ash and pumice that fell from the sky; Herculaneum was swallowed by a series of pyroclastic surges and flows that left about 20 m of volcanic material over the town. That deep, hot, airless burial carbonised and preserved wood, food and a whole library of papyrus scrolls, things that rotted away at Pompeii. A smaller and richer town of around 5,000 people, it has been excavated on and off since 1738, still lies more than 75% buried under the modern town, and has been part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site with Pompeii and Torre Annunziata since 1997.
Twenty Metres of Pyroclastic Flow, Not a Rain of Ash
The eruption began around 1 pm on its first day, now thought to have been on or after 17 October 79 rather than the traditional 24 August. Autumn fruit in the shops, sealed wine jars and a coin that could not have been minted before September all point to the later date. A column of ash and pumice rose 27 to 33 km into the sky, and prevailing winds carried it south-east, onto Pompeii, where roofs collapsed under the weight. Herculaneum, to the west of the volcano, received only a few centimetres of ash. It was enough to frighten most of its people into leaving.
The town's real ordeal came at about 1 am the next day, when the eruption column collapsed onto the flanks of Vesuvius. The first pyroclastic surge, a ground-hugging cloud of ash and hot gas, swept through the largely empty town at around 160 km/h. Six flows and surges followed, burying Herculaneum about 20 m deep. In some streets the material moved gently enough to leave walls and furniture standing; elsewhere it tore down columns and threw a marble statue of the local patron Marcus Nonius Balbus 15 m from its base.
That thickness shaped everything that followed. Pompeii's shallow cover was easy to dig away once it was found in 1748. At Herculaneum the deposit set into hard, rock-like tuff, and the modern town of Resina had grown up on top. Resina changed its name to Ercolano in 1969, in honour of the buried city, and today has about 49,000 inhabitants. Ground movement known as bradyseism has also lowered the ancient site, so parts of it now lie up to 4 m below sea level.
Carbonised Beams, Bread and the Villa of the Papyri
Because the pyroclastic material was hot but sealed out oxygen, organic objects charred rather than burned. Excavators have recovered roof timbers, beds, doors, shelving and food in carbonised form, alongside the marble cladding that marks Herculaneum out as a resort for Rome's elite. In the House of Argus, uncovered in the late 1820s, diggers found an upper floor with a balcony over Cardo III, the first time a second storey had been excavated in such detail; its wooden shelving and cupboards were later lost. Public buildings survive just as well. The Central Baths, built around the 1st century CE, kept separate sections for men and women, and the town drew its water from the Serino aqueduct of the Augustan age through lead pipes laid under the streets and controlled by valves.
The greatest prize lies a few hundred metres outside the town. The Villa of the Papyri stretched more than 250 m along the ancient shoreline on four terraces and may have belonged to Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, Julius Caesar's father-in-law. It was found in 1750, when a well was being dug, and between 1752 and 1754 workmen pulled out what looked like lumps of charcoal. Some were thrown away before anyone noticed faint letters on them. They were papyrus rolls, and the official list now counts more than 1,800 rolls and fragments, the only library from the Greco-Roman world to survive more or less whole. Many are Greek philosophy; 44 works have been identified as written by Philodemus of Gadara, an Epicurean philosopher who lived at Herculaneum. Attempts to open them did great damage. The monk Antonio Piaggio's 18th-century unrolling machine, which pulled the papyrus open with silk threads, destroyed the beginning of every roll it worked on. Most of the villa is still underground, and the Getty Villa in Malibu, California, is a reproduction of it.
The Boat Sheds: 300 Skeletons Found From 1980
For two and a half centuries, excavators found so few bodies at Herculaneum that most people assumed nearly everyone had escaped. That changed in 1980 and 1981, when a dig led by Giuseppe Maggi reached the ancient beach in front of the town walls. Along the shore was a row of 12 stone vaults facing the sea, usually called the boat sheds or boat houses. The first campaign turned up more than 55 skeletons on the beach and in the first six vaults, including the woman nicknamed the "Ring Lady" for the rings still on her fingers, found in 1982.
Further work in the 1990s uncovered 296 skeletons on the beach or packed into 9 of the 12 vaults, and the total from this area eventually reached 340. Analysis suggests that men mostly died on the open beach, while women and children huddled inside the chambers. They were waiting for rescue by sea that never came. Studies of their postures and bones indicate that the first surge, at around 500 °C, killed them almost instantly. Unlike Pompeii, where plaster was poured into the hollows left by decayed bodies, Herculaneum's victims left no such cavities, because the heat vaporised their flesh at once. What survives is the bone, which has proved a rich record: a 2021 isotope study of 17 individuals found that the men ate about 1.6 times as much fish as the women. One skeleton, number 26, found beside a boat with an ornate dagger and belt, belonged to a military officer who may have been part of a rescue effort.
Tunnels Under Resina: Excavation Since 1738
Herculaneum was the first of the Vesuvian cities to be found, decades before Pompeii. In 1709 the Prince d'Elbeuf, building a villa nearby, bought the site of a newly dug well and tunnelled from its bottom in search of statues. He hit what proved to be the theatre and removed fine sculptures, including two marble women now in Dresden, before stopping in 1711 for fear of collapse. Systematic work began in 1738 under Charles of Bourbon, King of Naples and later Charles III of Spain, who was building a palace at nearby Portici. His engineers, Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre and later Karl Weber, worked like miners, driving shafts and galleries through the tuff and hauling objects up in baskets.
The finds, published as Le Antichità di Ercolano, helped launch European Neoclassicism; by the end of the 18th century Herculaneum motifs were turning up on wall paintings, tripod tables and teacups. Digging stopped in 1762 after the scholar Johann Joachim Winckelmann attacked its treasure-hunting methods. It resumed under Francis I from 1828 to 1837 and continued eastward until 1875. The open-air site most visitors see today is largely the work of Amedeo Maiuri, who between 1927 and 1942 exposed about four hectares. The northwest baths, the House of the Dionysian Reliefs and parts of the Villa of the Papyri followed between 1996 and 1999, but the forum, the temples and the theatre still lie beneath Ercolano.
From Packard Conservation to the Vesuvius Challenge
Exposure has been harder on Herculaneum than burial ever was. Weathering, intensive tourism, vandalism, poor management and water seeping from the modern town above weakened its walls and foundations, and by the end of the 20th century parts of the site were in a dire state. In 2001 the Packard Humanities Institute began the Herculaneum Conservation Project, a partnership with the Italian heritage authorities that first funded urgent repairs and then helped plan long-term care. Working with the Getty, its conservators found a way to use solvents to remove wax that Maiuri's team had applied to a painted tablinum in 1938; water seeping into the wall had made the paint cling to the wax and curl away. New excavation was paused so that money could go to conservation instead.
The scrolls, meanwhile, have become a test case for computer imaging. In 2023 Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross and the computer scientist Brent Seales launched the Vesuvius Challenge, offering prizes to anyone who could read unopened rolls from 3D X-ray scans. On 12 October 2023, Luke Farritor, a 21-year-old student at the University of Nebraska, won $40,000 for detecting the first word, porphyras, Greek for "purple". On 5 February 2024 a team was awarded the $700,000 grand prize for revealing about 5% of one scroll, apparently an unknown text by Philodemus on pleasure in music and food. In June 2026 the project reported that a scroll known as PHerc. 1667 had been virtually unwrapped and read from end to end, giving 22 columns of what may be a Stoic treatise by Chrysippus.
To see the other half of the story, visit our guide to Pompeii, read about the volcano itself in Mount Vesuvius, or look at the coastline both towns once faced in our guide to the Bay of Naples.