3-011-758 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Recent discoveries in the buried city of Pompeii: general view of the excavations, 1864. Engraving from a photograph '...placed at our disposal by the Rev. James Fletcher...showing that part of the ancient city which has, within the last year and a half or two years, been laid open by the zeal and energy of the new Administration...great progress has been made in the task of bringing to light that abundant store of curious relics of antiquity which had remained for eighteen centuries buried in the ruins of Pompeii. The extent and importance of these operations, carried on under the direction of Cavaliere Fiorelli, with the advice of Signor Niccolini, the highest authority upon the subject, have been acknowledged throughout Europe by the students of Roman history and the connoisseurs of classic art...It had been supposed that the most important locality for the excavations of Pompeii was that which lay around the Forum, and which was explored and minutely described some fifty years ago...The latest discoveries, however, prove that some of the buildings richest in artistic decoration, and otherwise most interesting, are to be found in the quarter which is but now thrown open to modern research'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.