A volcanic eruption in 79 AD buried the coastline and rendered the beach inaccessible to tourists, but recent restoration work has meant that tourists can now step foot on the beach as it was before the disaster for the first time.
The beach’s restoration will allow people to see the ruins “from the same position as the ancient Romans did,” Francesco Silano, director of Herculaneum Archaeological Park, said in an interview Thursday. “Visitors have to go down through the tunnel … and it’s as if they’ve gone back 2,000 years, and suddenly the beach appears.”
Herculaneum often sits in the shadow of its more famous neighbour Pompeii, which was also destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The coastline is known for containing the remains of at least 330 people who took refuge in boathouses in hopes of being rescued. Researchers say the remains, discovered in the 1980s, ’90s and 2000s, are mostly related women, children, babies, dogs and sheep, with adults and young men believed to have died on the shore.
Silano said the eruption covered Herculaneum with “enormous amounts of volcanic material.” Coastal areas were eventually flooded, with visitors only able to access the boathouse and ruins via a “suspension bridge” over the water.
He added that thanks to restoration work by the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Packard Institute of Humanities, visitors to the site can once again set foot on the beach for the first time, which reopened to the public on Wednesday.
The ancient beach had distinctive volcanic black sand, but local officials decided not to use it in the reconstruction because the sand could cause problems for wheelchair access, Silano said. Instead, they used a similarly colored dark material to recreate the view ancient inhabitants would have seen.
“Seeing where the sea once was, we become modern-day explorers of a huge blanket of volcanic flow that in a matter of hours covered the city and shared the feeling of almost total annihilation.” The inhabitants of ancient Rome news release The Italian Ministry of Culture has described this beach as “a unique place, unlike any other in the world.”
Silano added that the remains of 330 people found at the site are thought to represent 5 percent of the ancient city’s population, and organic material such as wood and food have also been found at the site.
Pompeii, about eight miles to the south, was largely buried under volcanic ash. UNESCOThe report said the sites were the only Roman urban site “so exceptionally preserved and unparalleled in completeness and extent anywhere in the world.”
According to UNESCO, both sites have been “progressively excavated since the mid-18th century and have been open to the public,” but much of Herculaneum’s ruins lie beneath the modern town and have only been explored through tunnels since the 1700s.
The eruption may have wiped out life from two ancient cities, but new discoveries from the area continue to fascinate researchers and tourists.
Earlier this year, archaeologists announced they had discovered a banqueting hall in Pompeii decorated with beautiful frescoes of mythological characters inspired by the Trojan War.
In 2021, archaeologists The body was discovered The case of a man aged between 40 and 45 who was found with his belongings and was dubbed “the last fugitive of Herculaneum.”
A year ago, Italian researchers said the heat from the eruption was so high that it vitrified the brain of one victim who died alone, as reported by The Washington Post.
Technology is also helping to bring forgotten worlds back to life: Last year, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln student was awarded a $40,000 prize for developing an AI program that could decipher parts of ancient scrolls that had been destroyed and buried in a volcanic eruption.
Stefano Pitrelli contributed to this report.
