Italy Guide
Campania
Herculaneum
Opening time: daily: March– Sept 8.30am–7.30pm; Oct– Feb 8.30am–6pm; €11 or combined ticket with Pompeii and the Villa Oplontis, valid 3 days
Price: €20
Website: www.pompeiisites.org
Address: Ercolano
The Roman town of HERCULANEUM was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius on August 24, 79 AD. The site was discovered in 1709, when a well-digger accidentally struck the stage of the buried theatre. Herculaneum was a residential town, much smaller than Pompeii, and as such it makes a more manageable site, less architecturally impressive but better preserved and more easily taken in on a single visit. Archeologists held for a long time that unlike in Pompeii, on the other side of the volcano, most of the inhabitants of Herculaneum managed to escape. However, recent discoveries of entangled skeletons found at what was the shoreline of the town suggest otherwise.
Make sure you do not miss the large Thermae or bath complex – the domed frigidarium of its men's section decorated with a floor mosaic of dolphins, its caldarium containing a plunge bath and a scallop-shell apse. Still intact are the benches where people sat and the wooden, partitioned shelves for clothing. On the far side of the baths, the House of Neptune and Amphitrite (Casa di Nettuno ed Anfitrite) holds sparklingly preserved and richly ornamental wall mosaics. Adjacent is the House of the Beautiful Courtyard (Casa del Bel Cortile) where skeletons of bodies still lie in the positions they fell. Turning right at the top of Cardo IV takes you around to Cardo V and most of the rest of the town's shops – a variety of places including a baker's, complete with ovens and grinding mills, a weaver's, with loom and bones, and a dyer's, with a huge pot for dyes. Behind the ones on the left you can see the Palestra, where public games were held, opposite which there's a well-preserved Taverna with counters and, further down Cardo V on the right, another the Taverna del Priapo, with a Priapic painting behind its counter.