Pompeii doesn't stop to amaze with new findings coming to light, but it is Herculaneum that might contain the greatest treasure, hidden beneath its most famous building — the Villa of the Papyri.

The largest Roman villa ever found, the Villa of the Papyri was the magnificent seafront retreat for Lucius Calpurnius Piso, Julius Caesar's father-in-law.

Piso, a literate man who patronized poets and philosophers, built there one of the finest libraries of its time.

A century after Piso's death, the villa was entombed under 100 feet of volcanic mud by the same eruption of Vesuvius that buried Herculaneum and the nearby cities of Pompeii and Stabiae.

Finally, in 1752, archaeologists working under the direction of Charles III, the Bourbon king of Naples, constructed a network of underground tunnels and entered the mansion in gondola-like boats.

Inside lay about 1,800 rolls of papyrus, reduced to lumps of coal by the 750-degree Fahrenheit cloud that wrapped the city during the eruption. Paradoxically, the eruption preserved the scrolls forever. In Herculaneum's seaside air the papyri would have survived for no more than 1,000 years. If a feasibility study on the resumption of excavations at the Villa of Papyri will give archaeologists the green light, more than 30,000 square feet possibly filled with priceless treasures will be brought to light.

But digging will not be an easy task. While Pompeii was relatively easy to excavate as it was buried under layers of ash, the Villa of the Papyri lies under solidified mud. And that's not all?

"Modern-day Ercolano sits on top of it. Several buildings, including the town hall, would have to be pulled down to make way for the digging," Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, Pompeii's archaeological superintendent, said.

The Villa of Papyri — re-created in the 1970s in California by Paul Getty, whose art museum in Malibu is a replica of how the villa is thought to have looked — stretched down toward the sea on four terraces.