More Herculaneum

Herculaneum was amazing  A lot of the time we were walking on volcanic ash and a lot of volcanic material was used as building materials. It was rather poignant.

I will mostly let the pictures speak for themselves below.

A street scene, showing second floors.

Ditto:

Rooms on a second floor. That's a wooden frame filled with blocks of volcanic rock forming the wall.

 This was a kind of flooring we saw a lot. The background - often used by itself- is made from bits of broken terra cotta roof tiles and amphora mixed with lime. The variation below shows marble tesserae mixed in for a decorative effect.

And this is a sign outside a tavern or lunch place. There's a figure who is some kind of deity associated with protecting small businesses. The four vessels indicate different kinds of wine available and their price. 

A beautiful, fairly intact home.

close-up of the beautiful mosaic flooring

This is a room (dining room?) in the above villa. The floor is the black squares on white background version of the above.  Look at the ceiling - so lovely.

Two thousand year old charred wood around the door frame of the above villa.

More charred wood in another building supporting the second floor.

More of the beautiful frescoes from the above room. This was not a private home, but some kind of club or guild for small businessmen, as far as I could understand.

This is from the House of the Beautiful Courtyard.

The picture below was one of the most amazing places. Probably a food store of some kind - selling wine and beans and other provisions.  The store owners lived above the store.

Look at the charcoaled wood, the frescos and, most remarkably, the leg and a bit of railing from a brass bed frame, just above and to the left of the wooden railing. 

From the same provision store - the charcoaled wooden racks holding amphorae of wine or oil or other things. Amphorae were basically the containers for everything - the mason jars, the tins, the plastic packaging all rolled into one.

From a nearby private villa- notice the wooden grills from the windows and this is a dining room. The dining couches are lower than I've seen in pictures, but there were a lot of houses that had this size. The remarkable thing is that they are wooden. 

Not open to the public, but  you can see through the metal supports that this was a balcony that overlooked the street. 

That's enough for now about Herculaneum.  There were other wonders but I can't find the pictures at the moment. Maybe the COG has some.