Pompeii & Herculaneum Day Trip from Naples: Step Back in Time

The Archeological site of Herculaneum (in Italian: Scavi di Ercolano) is the area south of the town centre of modern Ercolano where the Roman town of Herculaneum has been excavated. Herculaneum was destroyed and buried by lava and mud during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79 together with Pompeii, Stabiae and Oplontis. In 1997 the Herculaneum site was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Although Herculaneum was discovered before Pompeii, the excavation was so difficult that it was repeatedly interrupted in favour of the easier excavation of Pompeii. Herculaneum is smaller and less famous than Pompeii, but better preserved due to the different volcanic materials that covered the town.

the ruins of a big house for the wealthy.

The House of the Wooden Tramezzo was built in the pre-Roman age, around the 1st century BC. The house has a typical patrician facade that ends with an oval cornice while at the base it has masonry seats used by waiting clientes before being received by the owner; along the walls of the entrance jaws there remain traces of stucco on which frescoes had been made, but these are faded by time. On the east side of the atrium is the tablinum: the two rooms are divided by means of a partition, i.e., a kind of folding door, as tall as a man, made entirely of wood, charred as a result of the eruption, with shaped doors and large bronze rings on which lamps were rested.

Main street.

The College of the Augustals was built at the end of the first century B.C., probably around 14 B.C., in the Augustan period, during the redevelopment of the entire area[2]: the building was desired and financed by the two brothers A. Lucius Proculus and A. Lucius Iulianus, who also offered, on the day of the inauguration, a banquet to both the Augustals and the decurions, as stated in an epigraph found on November 25, 1960, about two meters above the floor and today placed on a side wall of the College

Public bathhouse.

A museum, holding, among the others, an amazing collection of objects found next to the skeletons.