FUTURE OF HERCULANEUM

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1923, Page 14

FUTURE OF HERCULANEUM

Next to Baia, Newport of the Roman patricians of the Augustine, age, Herr culaneum was the favourite watering place of that day. Under the mass of ashes and cinders that covers it still, doubtless lie the remains of temples, a splendid forum, magnificent villas,. and priceless art treasures. Excavations already accomplished have brought to light many rare bronzes and rich mosaics, states the "Christian Science Monitor." The matchless collection of bronzes in the Naples museum, wrongfully attributed to Pompeii, are, in point of fact, mostly from Herculaneum. Hercules, landing at Campana on his return from Iberia, the modern Spain, is credited in legend with the founding of Herculaneum, in the fourth century, B.C. The destruction came in the year 63, of our era.

Modern. R<jsina, midway between -Naples and Pompeii, now stands above what was Herculaneum; and such excavations as have been made have been carried on underneath the city of today. The descent into the excavated theatre is down 100 stone steps, into a cold and damp subterranean space, in which are visible only the stone seats and the stage. With the resources at the disposal of modern engineers it is scarcely questionable that the whole of the buried city could be excavated, and a unique and wonderful underground museum, like to nothing else in the world, established. The Roman art treasures sure to be found could be left m their exact places in the villas and temples. The whole could be electrically lighted and visitors would be attracted from all the world, their patronage more than paying for maintenance. A dozen years ago this project was being seriously discussed. But, like many others of a more or less similar nature, it was necessarily abandoned during the war, and through the period of chaotic conditions since existing. Recently, though, consideration of."it has been resumed; and the project of a remarkable subterranean museum in a city beneath a city will in time be bwught to accomplishment.