A lot of the introduction has been done on the main page, so this page just shows overviews of the Herculaneum archaeological site as a whole. You get to it via the modern suburb of Naples called Ercolano, and as soon as you enter the site, you can see how low the old city was, how much mud covered it, and on what a higher level the modern town was built.
Below in particular you can see the new city nestling above, although the old city is also on a slope. Note how the old buildings are still quite complete, as Herculaneum was covered in mud rather than lava, which would not have been quite as destructive at the time.
Obviously they have put new pantiled rooves on the buildings, and added a bit of concrete here and there to shore up the houses, perhaps slightly more so than in Pompeii. But nevertheless you can still get a flavour of the how the old town was as you walk around.
The picture below shows just how much mud was deposited on the town after the eruption. At that time, Herculaneum was actually a coastal resort, although it is a couple of kilometres away from the coast now. Incidentally, Sorrento now stands on a peninsula, but there is evidence that at one point it was an island, and lava filled in the gap. This shows how much the AD79 eruption modified the landscape in that area.
Below: At street level now, we saw in Pompeii that the Romans had sophisticated systems of plumbing, if not drainage, and here is another example found in Herculaneum:
Below: We were told that the rope on this pulley is original, amazingly preserved in the mud or other material which surrounded it. It must be the lack of oxygen, which needs to be present for materials to rot, has permitted this.
Now let's move on around the town. Below is a typical street scene:
Click here to go to the Casa D'Argo...