Lost library opens after 2,000 years.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: Up front: news, trends & analysis

The sprawling villa of Papyri, famed for its library of ancient scrolls, recently was opened to the public after almost 2,000 years.

Once occupying 30,000 square feet overlooking the Bay of Naples, the villa was adorned by hundreds of bronze and marble statues and stocked with a vast private library of texts written on papyrus scrolls, from which the villa derives its name. But in 79 A.D., Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried the villa, which belonged to the father-in-law of Julius Caesar and is recognized as one of Italy's richest Roman villas, under 100 feet of volcanic mud.

Diggers making exploratory tunnels stumbled across the villa in the 18th century and subsequent excavations unearthed a treasure trove of...