Herculaneum

Herculaneum was an ancient Roman town on the Bay of Naples in the Campania region of southern Italy, its remains lying beneath the modern comune of Ercolano. The town sat on a low spur of the volcanic slopes of Mount Vesuvius, close to the mountain and directly downhill from it, a position that put it in the path of the eruption of 79 AD. Unlike nearby Pompeii, which was buried mainly by falling ash and pumice, Herculaneum was buried under a series of fast-moving pyroclastic flows and surges that reached the coast at speeds of about 160 kilometers per hour and entombed the town under roughly 20 meters of volcanic material, which hardened into rock and pushed the ancient shoreline several hundred meters seaward of its Roman-era position. That depth of burial has kept much of the site sealed and comparatively well preserved.