insediamento, area urbana, Parco archeologico di Ercolano

The Roman town of Herculaneum was never a vast metropolis. Enclosed by walls, it is thought to have covered some twenty hectares, of which only about four and a half have been excavated. What survives above ground is, with the exception of the public baths and the palaestra, largely a collection of private houses from the imperial period. The forum, its temples and civic buildings remain buried, somewhere beneath the modern town.

The street plan was presumably laid out on a grid of at least three east-west decumani, intersected by five north-south cardines. At the southern edge, where the city met the sea, great arched vaults support terraces above which stand the suburban baths and expansive private mansions.

Herculaneum’s history is a layered one. Myth credits its foundation to Hercules; more prosaic accounts record Oscan, Etruscan and Samnite control before it was drawn into Rome’s orbit. It rebelled during the Social War, was taken by force in 89 BC, and then, in AD 79, was buried by Vesuvius. Most of it still waits to be found.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.