Herculaneum

Herculaneum on the Campania Artecard

Both the Campania Artecard and the Naples Museum Card include Herculaneum, and both add Pompeii, the Archaeological Museum and Caserta. How they compare with the other cards is on Naples Pass and Naples city passes.

Herculaneum tickets with no booking, and an audio guide on your phone

Card or ticket, Herculaneum doesn’t ask you to book a time. You buy the ticket, show the QR code on your phone at the gate and go in. It’s good for one entry, so don’t plan on popping out for lunch.

Our Herculaneum ticket costs €19.50 and comes with an audio guide app you download to your phone. You can cancel it before your visit date. Under-18s go in free, and on the ticket we sell they have their own option at checkout, with the same audio guide app. Children under 12 must be with an adult.

For a guide in person, the entry with a guided tour costs €44.50 and includes fast entry. One of its options adds the return trip from Naples. It can’t be cancelled.

Entry is free on the first Sunday of each month, the next being 6 December. Nothing can be booked online on those days, so you collect the free ticket at the ticket office.

Herculaneum opening hours and what’s open now

The park opens every day, public holidays included, and has kept its winter hours since 15 October. You leave through the gates on Corso Resina or Via dei Papiri Ercolanesi.

Give it two to three hours, which covers the streets, the baths, the shore and the Antiquarium without rushing. Some parts of the site are on special terms at the moment, and the Villa of the Papyri is closed:

The theatre visit is the one to catch if your dates allow. It runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays until 9 November, so only Wednesday 4 and Saturday 7 November are left. It takes you more than 20 metres down, through the tunnels dug under the Bourbon kings in the 18th century, to the theatre itself, found in 1738. Ask about it at the ticket office when you arrive.

What you see at Herculaneum, from the streets down to the old shore

The streets run parallel to the old coastline, between blocks of houses, with modern Ercolano rising right above the excavation. Among the public buildings uncovered are the Palestra, the exercise ground, with its cross-shaped pool; the Central Baths, with separate sections for men and women; and the College of the Augustales, the body that ran the cult of the emperor.

The Sanctuary of Venus stands by the terrace with the statue and altar of Marcus Nonius Balbus, a patron of the town. The Antiquarium shows a bronze Hydra of Lerna, sculptures from the garden of the House of the Stags and frescoes from the Villa of the Papyri.

Down on the ancient beach are the fornici, the vaulted chambers where about 300 skeletons were found in 1980. Nearby, in its own pavilion, is a carbonised boat more than nine metres long, probably a military launch.

Herculaneum or Pompeii, or both in one day

If you only have time for one, Herculaneum is the smaller and less tiring of the two, with houses that kept their upper floors. Pompeii has 44 hectares dug out, with the amphitheatre and the Villa of the Mysteries. They’re separate parks, each with its own ticket office, and there’s no joint ticket.

Both are on the same Circumvesuviana line, and Pompeii is 21 minutes further along. In winter, both let in their last visitors at 15:30, so for the pair start at Herculaneum when it opens at 8:30 and move on to Pompeii around midday. We also sell a guided tour of the two together, at €99.75.

How Herculaneum was found by a man digging a well

In 1738 a farmer, Ambrogio Nucerino, known as Enzechetta, was digging a well when he struck the theatre. It was the first monument found at any of the Vesuvian sites in the 18th century. Charles of Bourbon, then king of Naples, had the town explored through shafts and tunnels about 20 metres down, the same tunnels the theatre visit uses today.

Digging in the open air only began in 1927, under the archaeologist Amedeo Maiuri, who rebuilt parts of the town and presented it as an open-air museum, perhaps the first in Europe. The 1980s brought the ancient beach, the skeletons and the boat. The Villa of the Papyri, now closed, gave the town its other famous find: more than 1,800 papyrus scrolls, charred by the same heat.

The train to Herculaneum: the Circumvesuviana to Ercolano Scavi

Coming by car, there’s a municipal car park at Via dei Papiri Ercolanesi 19 and several private ones. From the airport, take the Alibus to the central station and the train from there.

Ercolano Scavi is also where the taxis and shuttles up Vesuvius start, and a day from Naples with Herculaneum and Vesuvius costs €95. In the town, the MAV is a private museum of virtual archaeology, separate from the park, with tickets from €11.