Herculaneum

Dionysius of Halicarnassus credited the founding to Heracles; Strabo to the Oscans. The Etruscans took control and were overthrown by the Greeks, who called it Heraklion; in the 4th century BC it came under the Samnites. Walls two to three metres thick, raised in the 2nd century BC, lost their protective purpose after the town took the Allies' side in the Social War of 91-88 BC and was defeated by Titus Didius, a legate of Sulla; they were absorbed into houses. It became a Roman municipium in 89 BC.

With a population of about 5,000, Herculaneum was smaller than Pompeii and wealthier, a seaside retreat for the Roman elite with a dense concentration of luxurious houses clad in coloured marble. The tribune Marcus Nonius Balbus embellished the town and had new buildings raised; the earthquake of 62 struck Herculaneum as well as Pompeii.

At about one in the afternoon Vesuvius began throwing material thousands of metres into the sky, in a column that reached 27-33 km and which Pliny the Younger described to Tacitus as a stone pine. The winds carried the fall southeast onto Pompeii; Herculaneum, west of the mountain, took only a few centimetres of ash; the ash nevertheless prompted most inhabitants to flee.

When the column collapsed onto the mountain and its flanks at one the following morning, the first pyroclastic surge ran through the largely evacuated town at 160 km/h, and six flows and surges buried the buildings some 20 m deep, leaving some areas almost intact and wrecking others: a marble statue of Balbus near the baths was thrown 15 m. The eruption has been shown to fall on or after 17 October, on the evidence of heavy clothing worn by the dead and autumn produce in the shops.

The city was rediscovered by chance in 1709, by tradition while a well was dug. Prince d'Elbeuf bought the site and tunnelled out from its bottom in search of sculpture, reaching what was later identified as the theatre; the digging stopped in 1711 out of concern for the stability of the structures above.

Major excavation resumed in 1738 under the patronage of Charles III of Spain, then building his palace at Portici and appointing Roque Joaquin de Alcubierre to supervise, and Le Antichita di Ercolano influenced early European Neoclassicism. Karl Jakob Weber came upon the Villa of the Papyri in 1750, with statues and more than 1,800 carbonised scrolls. Winckelmann's criticism of the treasure-hunting methods halted work in 1762, and by 1780 the Bourbon investigations had ended. Francis I renewed excavation between 1828 and 1837, and the digs pushed eastwards until 1875. From 1927 to 1942 Amedeo Maiuri ran a campaign sponsored by Mussolini's regime that uncovered about four hectares, now part of the archaeological park.

The few skeletons found inside the walls had long supported the view that most of the population escaped. Excavations on the ancient shoreline led by Giuseppe Maggi turned up more than 55 skeletons on the beach and in the first six boat sheds in 1980-82; work in the 1990s brought the count to 296, on the beach or huddled in nine of the twelve stone vaults facing the sea, and 340 bodies were identified. The victims' postures and skeletons seemed to indicate instant death from fulminant shock at about 500 °C; intense heat rather than suffocation by ash is now held the main cause of death around Vesuvius. Analyses suggest mainly men died on the beach, while women and children sheltered and died in the boat houses. Analysis published in 2021 identified one skeleton beside a boat as a military officer, with an elaborate dagger and belt, perhaps involved in a rescue mission.

In 1997 the excavations joined the UNESCO World Heritage list alongside Pompeii and Oplontis. Over 75% of the town remains buried, the forum, temples and theatre among it, and excavation has been temporarily suspended to put the funding into conservation: water damage from modern Ercolano above, tourism and poor management have all told on the fabric. From 2001 the Packard Humanities Institute has run the Herculaneum Conservation Project with the local authorities. The Parco Archeologico di Ercolano was created in 2016 and took up management in 2017; 563,165 visitors came in 2023, and many finds are held at the Naples National Archaeological Museum.

The carbonised scrolls have yielded text slowly: X-ray phase contrast tomography produced Greek words in 2015, and in 2024 the Vesuvius Challenge winners revealed hundreds of words across 15 columns, about 5% of a scroll.