What Vesuvius kept

The library of the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum was carbonised in the eruption. Its fragile scrolls remained unreadable for more than two centuries. Recent teams have used X-ray scans, computer vision and machine learning to reveal text inside still-rolled scrolls without ordinary physical unrolling. In 2026, the Vesuvius Challenge reported that one Herculaneum scroll had been virtually unwrapped and read end to end; the work on the others is still ongoing.

A 2025 study in Scientific Reports describes a unique case of vitrified human brain tissue from a victim at Herculaneum. Its calorimetric analysis found that the brain transformed into glass at well above 510°C. The authors infer a brief, dilute and much hotter pyroclastic flow: fast heating followed by very fast cooling, before the heavier deposits buried the site.

The familiar 24 August date comes from surviving copies of Pliny the Younger's letter, not from its lost original; the copies give different months. In 2018, excavations in Pompeii's Regio V uncovered a charcoal inscription dated 17 October. The Archaeological Park says it supports an October hypothesis, while INGV's multidisciplinary research places the eruption in autumn. That is stronger than calling 24 August settled, but it is not a licence to claim a single exact day from the inscription alone.

In Pompeii's Regio IX, archaeologists excavated one of the largest known private bath complexes in a Pompeian house: hot, warm and cold rooms, plus a changing room whose benches could accommodate up to thirty people. The cold room is a ten-by-ten-metre peristyle with a large pool. It connects directly to a banqueting room, making the house a place for display as well as bathing.

In February 2025, archaeologists announced a near life-size Dionysian frieze covering three walls of a banqueting room in Regio IX: bacchantes, satyrs and huntresses. The Ministry of Culture dates it to 40–30 BC, so the painting was already about a century old when Vesuvius erupted. The Regio IX excavation covers about 3,200 square metres and has identified more than fifty new rooms across the area.

Near Porta Stabia, two men were found metres apart after dying in different phases of the eruption. The older man died beneath falling lapilli while apparently trying to shield his head with a terracotta mortar. He carried a ceramic lamp, a small iron ring on his left little finger and ten bronze coins. The younger man was probably caught later by a pyroclastic flow while trying to reach the coast. The sequence comes from the archaeological context, not a witness account.

At the Casti Amanti bakery, excavators found two large herbivores outside the nearby stable, in a room beside the oven. The Archaeological Park identifies them cautiously as equids, not yet as a confirmed horse or donkey. Laboratory work is still underway on their role in the production complex and the conditions of their deaths. Their location raises questions about movement during the eruption, but it does not reveal a single animal's escape route.