The neighbourhood of Monte Bursaccio which was overcome by theeruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD that obliterated and preserved its better-known neighbours,Pompeii andHerculaneum, is famous for the frescoes of itsaristocratic villas, excavated before World War I. A hoard of Roman silver and coins that had been hurriedly stashed in a cistern for protection at the time of the eruption was also recovered in Boscoreale in 1895, and divided among several museums, including theLouvre and theBritish Museum.
Boscoreale, about a kilometre north ofPompeii of which it was an expansive, more rural outlying suburb, was notable in antiquity for having numerous aristocratic country villas and was preserved as a hunting park – hence its name, meaning "Royal Grove" – by thekings of Naples.
The villa of P. Fannius Synistor (seeVilla Boscoreale) was built and decorated shortly after mid-first century BC. The quality of its frescoes seems to have preserved them from changes in fashion, before the villa was entombed in the eruption.
The Antiquarium of Boscoreale was founded in 1991 by the Soprintendenza archeologica di Pompei thanks to the finds from Pompeii, Herculaneum,Oplontis,Stabiae,Terzigno, and Boscoreale and to a didactic apparatus.
The neighbouringBoscotrecase yielded some elite works of art to excavators at the same time, in particular at the Villa ofAgrippa Postumus, also known as the Imperial Villa or the Villa of Augusta.
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