Private Tour Description
With our private Herculaneum tour you’ll have the opportunity to walk through the lost, ancient city and admire entire buildings, streets and paintings from Roman times which survived one of the most devasting eruptions in history.
Pick up directly from your hotel or the indicated meeting point, where we will reach Herculaneum, after a 45-minute journey in which you will admire the beautiful Sorrento Coast.
Herculaneum was destroyed along with Pompeii in 79 A.D., and rediscovered in 1709. It was a residential town without Pompeii’s commercial importance surrounded by the villas of the wealthy Romans. When the catastrophe of 79 A.D. occurred, Herculaneum was submerged under a torrent of mud and lava that hardened into a soft tufa (a kind of course rock) that preserved many of the timber features and household objects which can still be seen today.
A large portion of the old Herculaneum is still buried under the modern town and even today excavations are carried out to discover what treasures lie buried under the rock, to the extent that some families are being rehoused so works can continue.
The archaeological site of Herculaneum, together with that of Pompeii and Oplontis, have been added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list in 1997.
We will return to Sorrento in the afternoon.
