Herculaneum had the same fate as Pompeii. The volcano, Mt Vesuvius erupted August 24, 79 AD. At 1:00 in the afternoon that day, it poured out gases which is what killed the people, then covered Pompeii in 6 meters of ash. Twelve hours later,at 1:00am, it covered the town of Herculaneum with 20 meters of lava.
Some of the people tried to escape the lava by running toward the water. They huddled in the boat houses, waiting for help to arrive. A boat had left earlier, but its assumed the boat was destroyed in a tsunami. One man did escape it all and wrote everything down. (Can't remember his name.) That's how they know so many details about what happened that day.
Pompeii was excavated first (1700's), which was easier, being buried only 6 meters deep. They have only excavated a small section of Herculaneum. They plan to stop where they're at and restore it to how it would have been in 79 AD.
Herculaneum was a summer holiday lace for all the rich people.
The skeletons in the caves are reproductions. The real ones are in Naples in a museum where they are preserved. Same as most of the furniture and anything else movable, kept in special rooms with controlled humidity, etc, to keep them from disintrigrating.
Here are some of the recent excavations. You see some of the wooden doors and posts are burned. Can't believe this is 2000 years old.
You can see the modern city in the background. It sits on top of Herculaneum. You can see the wall at the back where they have stopped the excavation. That would be the lava they've cut through.
Boat houses (bottom arches) where they people ran to, hoping to escape the lava.
The grassy area would have been the beach. There is sitting water there right now.
