Unique library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24096948-25132,00.html


The unique library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, buried
beneath lava by Vesuvius's eruption in AD79, is slowly revealing its
long-held secrets
STORED in a sky-lit reading room on the top floor of the Biblioteca
Nazionale in Naples are the charred remains of the only library to survive
from classical antiquity. The ancient world's other great book collections
-- at Athens, Alexandria and Rome - - all perished in the chaos of the
centuries. But the library of the Villa of the Papyri was conserved,
paradoxically, by an act of destruction................