Herculaneum's House of the Carbonized Furniture reopens after 30 years

One of the most fascinating domus at

Herculaneum, the Roman town buried and preserved by Vesuvius

along with Pompeii in 79 AD, has reopened after a 30-year

restoration.

The House of the Carbonized Furniture is open again thanks to

the restoration project conducted in a public-private

partnership with the Packard Humanities Institute (PHI), through

the Packard Institute for Cultural Heritage, which has been

active on the site for 25 years.

The domus, built during the Republican era, owes its name to the

discovery—between 1932 and 1933, during excavations directed by

Amedeo Maiuri—of a small table and a high-backed bed, carbonized

by the eruption of 79 AD. but preserved to this day with traces

of fabric and the original rope net.

The rooms are arranged around the atrium and the garden, with a

small temple-shaped lararium, a loggia on the upper floor, and

walls decorated in the Fourth Style.

Among the most precious spaces are the triclinium with a mosaic

and marble emblem and the oecus Cyzicenus, where the furnishings

that give the house its name were discovered.

"Bringing the House of Carbonized Furniture back to light and

returning it to the city, after nearly thirty years of closure,

is an achievement that deeply concerns us," said Federica

Colaiacomo, director of the Herculaneum Archaeological Park,

emphasizing that it "restorations of a human history made up of

everyday gestures" that the eruption "froze in time."

On the technical front, architect Rossella Di Lauro explained

that the most recent interventions involved "the reconstruction

of some wooden floors, the replacement of damaged architraves,"

and the restoration of the atrium columns, achieved "thanks to

accurate three-dimensional surveys."

The iron architraves have been replaced with new wooden

structures designed "to facilitate the monitoring and future

maintenance of the precious wooden artefacts."

The work is part of the project "Conservative Restoration of the

Structures and Decorated Surfaces of the Most Important Domus of

Herculaneum," which includes the reopening of six domus on the

site.

Following the House of the Tuscan Colonnade and the House of the

Wooden Shrine, which reopened in March 2025, further reopenings

are expected this autumn.

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