Archaeologists at Pompeii have identified the original location of a looted fresco fragment depicting the infant Hercules strangling serpents, solving a mystery that began when the artwork was stolen years ago from a Roman villa. The fragment, which returned to Italy in 2023 from a private American collection, once decorated the sacred chapel of the
Recent excavations at Pompeii have confirmed what archaeologists long suspected but struggled to document: survivors of Mount Vesuvius’s catastrophic 79 AD eruption returned to live among the ruins. The Pompeii archaeological discovery, announced Wednesday by site directors, provides concrete evidence that people inhabited the devastated Roman city for centuries after the volcanic disaster that killed
In 79 AD the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed by an enormous volcanic eruption. The devastation caused by the eruption of Vesuvius went on for two days, burying the two towns under superheated ash and mud. The destructive power of Vesuvius was estimated to be some 100,000 times greater than the atomic
Some of the finds from the cities destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius are ruined beyond restoration. Much was preserved but the destruction was immense, and the greater part of the contents of the houses were lost. Where they survive they are heavily damaged, and so it is with a charred scroll from Herculaneum, far