King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, impressed with Fiorelli’s progress at Pompeii, rewarded him with a gift of 30,000 lire. Fiorelli used the money to reopen the excavations at Herculaneum from 1869 to 1875. The difficulty of excavating through rock-hard mud had closed down the excavations in the later 18th Century, and an additional complication arose-- the town of Resina now covered much of the site, and excavations threatened to undermine the foundations of the more modern structures built atop the ancient town. It was not until the 20th Century that excavations resumed in any systematic way. A recent collaboration between the Archaeological Superintendency of Pompei and the British School at Rome resulted in the establishment of the Herculaneum Conservation Project, and has ensured that excavations continue in a responsible manner at Herculaneum.

The 20th Century excavations at Pompeii proceeded under several influential archaeologists. From 1910 to 1924, Vittorio Spinazzola became the director of the excavations at Pompeii, as well as the director of the National Museum of Naples. Under Spinazzola’s guidance, the main street of Pompeii, the Street of Abundance, was excavated. The controversial archaeologist Amedeo Maiuri followed Spinazzola as director of excavations at Pompeii, working there from 1924 until his death in 1963. The site has been administered by several directors since that time, and currently is under the direction of Superintendent Pietro Giovanni Guzzo. Work continues at Pompeii, and is made significantly more difficult by the need to balance the maintenance of what has been excavated in the past, while making the site accessible to the almost 2 million visitors who flock annually to this UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Rediscovery and Early Excavations
Giuseppe Fiorelli