Prince Emmanuel Maurice of Lorraine, digging a well on his estate near Resina, had laborers strike ancient marble roughly 65 feet underground—the first physical trace of Herculaneum found since the town vanished under volcanic material in the eruption that also destroyed Pompeii. Systematic, if crude, excavation followed under Austrian and later Bourbon rule, eventually revealing an ancient Roman town frozen by pyroclastic flow.
Unlike Pompeii, buried mostly under ash and pumice, Herculaneum was entombed by scorching pyroclastic flows that carbonized wood, sealed buildings intact, and even preserved papyrus scrolls, food, and wooden furniture that would otherwise have rotted away over eighteen centuries. The well-diggers had unknowingly bored straight into the town's theater, hauling up statues and colored marble that eventually found their way into noble collections before anyone grasped their origin.
Early excavation was less archaeology than treasure hunting: tunnels were dug haphazardly through the volcanic rock, and countless finds were stripped for royal collections with little record of context. It would take until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for more careful, scientific methods to take hold, and Herculaneum remains only partially excavated today—much of the ancient town still lies beneath the modern city of Ercolano, waiting.