The archaeology of the towns buried by Vesuvius begins here, in a well dug to water a vegetable garden. In 1710 a peasant found pieces of marble and sold them to a Naples craftsman; the nobleman the craftsman worked for bought the well and set about digging tunnels. It was the Roman theatre of Herculaneum, the first building found of all the towns destroyed by the eruption.
What to see
The theatre was built in the Augustan age at the will of a local magistrate and could hold two and a half thousand people. The eruption covered it with ash, lapilli and mud, which hardened into a compact layer of tuff: this is why it is so well preserved and why it has never been excavated. You visit it through narrow galleries, in the dark, with torches.
The first diggers pulled out columns of precious marbles, inscriptions and nine statues, now divided between a German museum, a nearby royal palace and a botanical garden. At first they believed it was a temple of Jupiter; it was a scholar, looking at the finds, who understood it was a theatre. From there came the first maps and the first orderly methods of excavation.
Visiting
The entrance is on corso Resina, above the Herculaneum excavations; you go down on a guided visit by booking, in small groups, and closed shoes are needed. Down there the air is damp and the spaces narrow: it is not for those who suffer from claustrophobia. An hour.
Our editors' tip
Look at the walls of the tunnels: you can see the pick marks of the Bourbon diggers and the negative shapes of the points from which statues were torn out. It is the only Vesuvian site still visited as it was visited in the eighteenth century, in the dark and underground, and it is worth as much as the theatre behind those walls.