Herculaneum's Ruins

The terme or baths are amazingly well preserved, you can actually see the hypocaust under the mosaic floors where sections have fallen through.

Some of the most extensive and well-preserved frescos are in the Sede degli Augustali and the beautiful Casa dei Cervi. You can see stunning mosaic floors in several buildings (most notably the women's baths) and the wall mosaic in the Casa di Nettuno e Anfitrite is particularly impressive.

Quick Tips:

I went in October and it wasn't too crowded, though even then there were a few large tour groups going around which were best avoided if you actually wanted to get a good look at things.

Best Way To Get Around:

If only all 2000-year-old ruins could be so well preserved! The eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD may have destroyed the lives of the people living in Herculaneum, but, by carbonising organic materials and then burying the entire town in lava and ash it has preserved it for us in almost perfect condition.

A short ride (about 20 minutes) on the circumvesuviano train line will take you from the central station in Naples to Ercolano Scavi station. From there it's a short walk down the hill towards the sea to the ruins.

Plan on spending several hours here and taking lots of photos. I'd filled the 512 meg card in my digital camera before I was half way around!

The buildings are so amazingly well-preserved, many are still fully roofed, and decorated with vibrant frescos and mosaics. You can truly get a sense of what life was like for the people who lived here.

You'll need to provide ID as a guarantee and hand over a fiver if you want to get the audio guide, which also entitles you to a map. If you don't rent the audio guide you don't get a map at all, however, the guide is almost essential if you want to know what the various buildings you're looking at were used for. There's a section on each of the buildings and a few extras which you can listen to to get more information on a particular topic.

Some buildings which are described in the audio guide may not be open to the public when you visit, which is a shame, but the site is undergoing on-going preservation work so this is inevitable really.

The baths at Herculaneum have two entrances, one from the Cardo III Superiore to the men's section and another from the Cardo IV Superiore to the women's. The women's baths have well preserved mosaic floors which are still intact and haven't collapsed into the hypocaust below. The men's baths are larger with a wonderful circular frigidarium or cold pool complete with colourful though now badly faded marine frescos. The floors here are damaged, but this does give one an opportunity to see the structure of the hypocaust which allowed heat to circulate around the building. The changing rooms are wonderful with their little shelves for the bather's clothes. Outside the baths is an exercise area, the Palaestra. The size of the baths, while not enormous, is quite large considering the extent of the town, and you can see that bathing was an important part of ancient roman life. People came here not just to bathe, but to exercise, socialize and relax in pleasant surroundings.