THE authorities at Pompeii have announced that the long buried Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, which is believed to contain a tantalising “lost library” of Latin and Greek poetic and philosophical masterpieces, will be opened to the public from this Saturday for the first time since it was entombed in mud and lava 2,000 years ago.

But Pier Giovanni Guzzo, the superintendent of Pompeii, said that although funding was being assembled for a renewed dig to uncover the “Holy Grail of Latin scholarship”, a feasibility study on whether to resume excavations was still in progress. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, director of the British School at Rome, said the priority was to “conserve what has already been uncovered”.

Professor Wallace-Hadrill said the decision to open the restored site to the public had been made possible by conservation work funded by the Packard Humanities Institute, the Campania region and the EU.

The villa, which had suffered from neglect over the years because of the sporadic and interrupted excavations, will be open to visitors by arrangement in groups of 25 on weekend mornings so that people can see for themselves what has been done and what remains to be done.

The villa, which belonged to Lucius Calpurnius Piso, the father-in-law of Julius Caesar, once occupied an area of 30,000sq ft overlooking the sea near Naples. Considered one of the most magnificent villas of the Roman world, it was “recreated” in the 1970s in California by Paul Getty, whose art museum at Malibu is a replica of how the villa is thought to have looked.

Like Pompeii nearby, the villa was overwhelmed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79. Whereas Pompeii was preserved under layers of ash however, and therefore easier to excavate, the Villa of the Papyri is buried in solid volcanic rock formed by the solidified mud which rolled over it. The villa was first discovered in the 18th century by tunnellers exploring a well shaft. More of it came to light a decade ago when modern archaeologists drove a crater 100ft deep into the rock.

The crater, however, is vulnerable to flooding, and scholars disagree over the high cost and feasibility of digging through the rock in seach of a treasure which may or may not be there. The difficulties are compounded by the fact that much of the villa now lies beneath modern housing.

Nearly 2,000 scrolls have been found since the first dig in 1752, and most have been painstakingly unrolled. They have proved, however, to consist largely of the works of the Greek Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, who lived at Piso’s seaside villa and enjoyed his patronage.

Last year a group of British and American classical experts led by Professor Robert Flower, HO Wills Professor of Greek at the University of Bristol, appealed in a letter to The Times for the excavations to be resumed so that lost works by Virgil, Horace and others could be retrieved.

They were supported by the Prince of Wales when he visited Herculaneum last November during a tour of Italy. The Prince, however, also acknowledged the problematic nature of the site and the need for conservation as well as excavation.