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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