Herculaneum Archaeological excavations

 “And there Hercules, exhausted by the immense efforts he had to steal in the garden of the Hesperides, had to steal a pleasant and pleasant place, on the slopes of the green Vesevo he founded a city in his name, naming it Herculanum”. Thus Leopardi in the Zibaldone translates a passage from Strabo which recalls the founding myth of the city of Herculaneum, a city perhaps as dark as Pompeii but renamed by the Greeks with a name and a myth all their own. Herculaneum maintained this diversity until its destruction: a privileged holiday place for the high Roman aristocracy and for the high ranks of the navy, its inhabitants enjoyed an economic well-being unimaginable in nearby Pompeii.

We will visit the collection of "Herculanean gold" which was created as a temporary exhibition and then became permanent together with some works and objects found in the archaeological excavation such as a boat, a sad reminder of the last moments of the life of its inhabitants who thought of escaping by sea but were buried from a mass of incandescent mud.

The tour will start from the tunnel that the archaeologist Martusciello opened in the 1960s in the tufaceous massif born from that avalanche of pyroclastic material to immediately find ourselves faced with the immense drama that took place there: hundreds of skeletons piled up in the arches of the port in waiting to escape by sea.

We will then go back up to the terraces of the port where there is the statue of one of the most powerful men in the city Marco Nonio Balbo and we will follow the straight development of ancient Herculaneum admiring its sumptuous domus, the thermae, its roofs still intact and the wooden partitions still miraculously intact they are today. What are you waiting for? Book!

Entrance fee to the site not included in the cost of the guide service.

Possibility to organize a private appointment for smaill or big groups.