A place

Herculaneum

4 stories from this place.

The Cabinet June 24, 2026 · Pompeii archaeological site

The Italian Archaeologist Who Turned Pompeii Into a Science by Pouring Plaster Into Empty Holes

When the Bourbon-era treasure hunters were finished with Pompeii, the site was a substantially-mined ruin without a coherent excavation record. Giuseppe Fiorelli took over the directorship in 1863 and turned the site into the founding example of modern archaeological method. His most-famous innovation was to pour liquid plaster into the empty voids left by [Vesuvius's victims](/articles/vesuvius-pompeii-79).

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The Footnote June 24, 2026 · Pompeii

The Earthquake That Hit Pompeii Seventeen Years Before Vesuvius and Should Have Warned Everyone

A major earthquake struck Pompeii on 5 February 62 AD, doing substantial damage across the city and the neighbouring Vesuvian region. Most of it was still under repair when Vesuvius erupted seventeen years later. Modern volcanology now reads the 62 AD earthquake as the unheeded magmatic-warning sign of the 79 AD catastrophe.

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The Cabinet June 24, 2026 · Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum

The Only Classical Library That Survived Antiquity Was Buried Intact at Herculaneum

When [Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD](/articles/vesuvius-pompeii-79), it buried a Roman seaside villa at Herculaneum under 25 metres of pyroclastic debris. Inside the villa was a working library of about 1,800 papyrus scrolls — the only intact classical library that has ever been recovered. The scrolls were carbonised by the heat. Modern X-ray imaging is finally reading them.

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The Cabinet June 18, 2026 · Pompeii, Campania (modern Italy)

The Eighteen Hours That Stopped Pompeii

On 24 October 79 AD Vesuvius opened above the Bay of Naples and buried two Roman towns under twenty feet of pumice and ash. The people who died in Pompeii were killed in the first wave of the second day, by a cloud of superheated gas at six hundred degrees Celsius.

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