This article, divided into two main parts, first analyses the archaeological data for a return to the site of Herculaneum after its destruction in the ad 79 eruption. The evidence includes a necropolis above the Roman town, along with burials and other finds in the Herculaneum area up to the late antique period. The second part looks at how the medieval settlement of Resina grew up over ancient Herculaneum and how new archaeological research has demonstrated that tunnelling was already being carried out to retrieve marble and building materials from the Roman town in the fourteenth century. This occurred sporadically, but it seems to have continued, without being continuous, through the subsequent centuries and pre-dates by several centuries the so-called ‘re-discovery’ of Herculaneum in 1710, which took place over twenty years before the beginning of systematic excavations in 1738.