Les Derniers Jours d'Herculanum
Maurice Ribière, Marco Visalberghi
2002 - 52 min - Beta numérique - Couleur - France, Italie, Royaume-Uni

On 24 August in the year 79 A.D., Vesuvius went wild and became part of history. The rich Roman city of Pompei disappeared from the map, buried under a hail of pumice stone. Several thousand of its inhabitants perished in a long and painful agony. Less than ten kilometres away, the small aristocratic town of Herculaneum was covered by thirty metres of volcanic mud. Long forgotten, it only came to light again at the beginning of the 18th century.
In two hundred years, excavations there have only come up with the remains of thirty-two bodies. What was the fate of Herculaneum and its inhabitants ? Up to now we have had no answer. The recent discovery of the skeletons of three hundred individuals has made the clarification of these mysteries possible.