Una testimonianza inattesa della prima età moderna sulle città vesuviane sepolte

The conventional understanding is that the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD buried the Vesuvian cities until they were excavated by the Bourbons in the 18th century. This 'discovery' narrative is supported by Unesco and the Naples Archaeological Museum. The article questions that view, exploring evidence of earlier findings in Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis and Stabiae prior to official excavations. Dispersed and fragmentary accounts in fact suggest occasional discoveries that could have prompted systematic investigations before the 1700s. A notable 16th-century manuscript, ‘Descrittione di Castell’a Mare di Stabia’, details recent first-hand finds in La Civita, correctly identified as Pompeii, including houses and artefacts. While Giulio Cesare Capaccio used the manuscript for Stabiae in 1607, the section on Pompeii was surprisingly omitted. This case study demonstrates how local scholars discovered several traces, yet these remained marginal to the main scholarly discourse on Antiquity. The reasons for this remain unclear, but it seems that there is a gap between textual reconstructions and local tangible finds that did not enter mainstream scholarly circles.