The memory of the ancient splendor almost lost among the inhabitants of Resina.
The past was buried under meters and meters of “pappamonte”, the rock formed by mud and solidified volcanic materials, and was difficult even to imagine it. Until in 1710 Enzechetta, as the farmer Ambrogio Nocerino was nicknamed, started digging a well and found pieces of marble. They were then noticed by a marble worker who at that time was working nearby, in the villa of the Duke of Elboeuf under construction, and who bought them thinking he could use them in some churches in Naples. The concatenation of the accidents made the duke aware of the discovery and he decided to buy the well and to had several tunnels dug to explore the subsoil. There he found statues, parts of columns and other marble findings, perfect to adorn the newly completed villa. The abundance of valuable pieces of clear Roman manufacture signaled that the level of ancient Herculaneum must have been reached. It was guessed it was a temple dedicated to Hercules, instead it was the theater of the city. The excavation was suspended and many years had to pass before the resumption in 1738, simultaneously with the works for the construction of the new summer palace that Charles of Bourbon was having built in Portici. The new excavation was initiated by the Spanish archaeologist Roque Joaquìn d’Alcubierre, who would later begin to unearth Pompeii and Stabia. In 1750 the Swiss Karl Weber also took part in the excavation and made important discoveries, starting in 1752 with Villa dei Papiri, which returned the precious fund of a thousand charred papyri, attracting the attention of the entire Europe to Herculaneum. It was from the Roman buildings that emerged from the subsoil that Neoclassicism took inspiration. And it was the attractive force of the discoveries of the city buried by the eruption of Vesuvius that led many young European nobles to Italy, launching the fashion of the Grand Tour. Already in 1751 all the findings were transferred to the Real Villa of Portici where the Herculanense Museum was born, a real museum enjoyed by the sovereign with the court and foreign guests. And in those years the sumptuous villas of the Golden Mile began to rise, between Herculaneum and Torre del Greco, to renew the splendor of the Roman villas that archeology was restoring to the knowledge of the modern world.
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