Pompeii's smaller, richer neighbour met a different end. Herculaneum was sealed not by falling ash but by a superheated surge that carbonised everything, wood, furniture, food, even papyrus, and preserved it standing. Two-storey houses survive with their upper floors and wooden beams, and a boathouse where hundreds sheltering from the eruption were found. The charred library of the Villa of the Papyri is the only library to reach us from antiquity, and scholars are now reading its scrolls with AI. Buried under modern Ercolano, only a fraction has been excavated.
Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.
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