How large was Herculaneum?
Set between two rivers and at the very edge of the Bay of Naples, Herculaneum had a population of 4000-5000 free people, children, and slaves. Newest estimates of Pompeii’s population range from 10,000 to 20,000, and all evidence shows Pompeii to have been a much more bustling, noisy town, walls laden with advertising and roads busy with commerce. Only about a quarter of Herculaneum’s ruins have been explored; the modern city called Ercolano sits over of most of the ancient city, atop dozens of meters of solidified volcanic flow.
