Inside the vault that holds the lost treasures of Pompeii
From vintage wine to restored frescoes, National Geographic gained access to thousands of fragile artifacts that capture the customs and joys of ancient Roman life.
In 1709, an Italian farmer digging a well beneath the town of Ercolano struck something strange: a slab of stage from an opulent Roman theater, once the pride of a luxurious seaside getaway called Herculaneum. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, the town was entombed under 60 feet of volcanic rock—and erased from memory.
The farmer’s discovery set off a treasure hunt. Charles of Bourbon, the 18th century king of Naples, ordered systematic excavations. Bronze and marble statues were hauled off, along with gold bracelets, jeweled rings, amphorae, and coins—even an intact boat was uncovered.
Some of the bounty was plundered, but a lot of it survived. Today much of that royal excavation, alongside other priceless artifacts from Herculaneum’s sister city of Pompeii, resides at Italy’s National Archaeological Museum of Naples, a grand 16th-century building in the heart of the city. But only a fraction of what was found is on display.
Beyond the exhibits of the museum's most famous holdings, which include a notoriously risqué marble of the god Pan in flagrante with a goat, a hidden labyrinth of storerooms contain riches of a different kind: the everyday belongings of people who lived in the shadow of Vesuvius.
Known to museum staff as “Sing Sing” after the notorious maximum-security New York prison, these barred vaults are off limits to the public and protect thousands of unexhibited items from Pompeii and Herculaneum. But you won’t find marble or mosaics here.
(Vesuvius buried these scrolls in Herculaneum. AI is bringing them back.)
Instead, Sing Sing’s shelves are lined with items like wine jugs, drinking cups, and oil lamps. There are even preserved foods like charred seeds, fruits, and a loaf of bread. “When you look at these objects the sense of tragedy becomes more real, because you are able to [visualize] the reality of the people who died,” says Valentina Cosentino, an archaeologist who works at the museum. “They represent the true story of the lives of the people who lived in Herculaneum and Pompeii.”
For National Geographic's August cover story revisiting the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, photographers Paolo Verzone and Massimo Nicolaci were granted rare access to Sing Sing, as well as a second restricted storeroom holding hundreds frescoes rescued from the ashes of the volcano.
(Vesuvius revisited: a new story of the day the world exploded.)
Stepping into these chambers felt like “looking through a family photo album,” Nicolaci says. “It was very moving, because you can immediately connect [to these items]—a bridge between past and present, shortening the distance with history and making the story of Pompeii relevant to us now.”
Modern archaeology has come a long way from the plundering of kings' tombs and focussing obsessively on the ancient elite. Today, researchers place equal emphasis on everyday artifacts—which are what make the Sing Sing collection so singular. "We can see how life stopped in a moment," says Cosentino. "We can see how they were drinking, how they were cooking."
Among her favorite objects is a glass bottle with a bit of olive oil clinging to the bottom. Several years ago, scientists in Italy used chromatographic, spectroscopic, and mass spectrometric techniques to confirm the date of the residue, placing it among the world's oldest known remnants of oil.
Meanwhile, in the fresco storeroom, some 500 works rest beneath protective cloth. Many were removed during the 18th- and 19th-century excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum using a technique in which the frescoes were cut away from the wall and then shaved thin from the back. They were then supported with a slate backing and enclosed in a wooden case that doubled as a frame.
Each fresco was "transformed from an integral part of an architectural decoration into an independent, transportable picture intended for the Bourbon royal collections and, later, for the museum in Naples," explains Cosentino.
One depicts a dining scene with bread, wine glasses, and a jug of oil. "We have that exact same oil jug in Sing Sing, along with the same glasses, and the carbonized bread," Cosentino says. "So we have both the real object and then the fresco of these objects."
For Verzone, the power of these artifacts lies in their familiarity. "Some daily life artifacts have not changed," he explains. "We identify ourselves in these objects because we still use them every day."
"Studying and observing history requires different layers," Nicolaci adds. "Statues, frescoes, and other museum pieces are already accessible to everyone. These objects connect the past with the present in a more direct way."
