On 24 August AD 79 Mt Vesuvius erupted on a massive scale. Herculaneum, Pompeii, and other towns on the Italian coast near Naples, disappeared under a river of molten lava and a deadly hail of volcanic ash and burning pumice stone. (You could say Herculaneum was having a run of very bad luck, for a few years earlier the place had been completely destroyed by an earthquake, and had only just been rebuilt.) When submerged Herculaneum was rediscovered in 1709, archaeologists found that the volcanic mud had kept the town in an amazing state of preservation ...
Small details, such as these earthware storage jars, help bring alive the Roman way of life from nearly 2000 years ago ...
This is a mosaic of the sea-god Neptune and his wife Amphitrite ...
Archaeological investigations and painstaking restoration work are still going on in Herculaneum ...
