Combo: Herculaneum Skip-the-Line Tickets + Campania Express: Naples to/from Herculaneum

A short train ride from the heart of Naples and you're standing at the entrance of a Roman city that has been waiting, almost perfectly intact, for nearly two thousand years.

Getting started

Make your way to Naples Porta Nolana station in central Naples. Board the Campania Express train. Keep an eye on platform displays and listen for loudspeaker announcements to make sure you board the right service. The journey to Ercolano Scavi takes just 18 minutes, with trains running every 3 hours. On arrival, the archaeological park is a 10 to 15 minute walk from the station exit. Present your voucher at the entrance to redeem your skip-the-line entry ticket and head straight inside.

What to expect

Herculaneum Archaeological Park

Unlike Pompeii, which was buried gradually under falling ash, Herculaneum was sealed in seconds by a pyroclastic surge so dense it preserved wooden furniture, food, carbonised textiles, and organic materials that no other Roman site has kept intact. Walking its streets feels less like visiting ruins and more like stepping into a city that simply stopped one morning in 79 AD.

Features

• Samnite House: One of Herculaneum's oldest surviving residences, with a well-preserved atrium and upper gallery offering a clear picture of aristocratic Roman domestic life before the eruption.

• Temple of the Augustales: A vividly frescoed temple dedicated to the imperial cult of Augustus, housing some of the most striking painted surfaces still visible in their original location anywhere on the site.

• Forum Baths: Among the finest intact Roman bathing complexes in existence, with original underfloor heating systems, stucco-decorated changing rooms, and a cold plunge pool still legible in its original form.

• House of Neptune and Amphitrite: Named for its extraordinary polychrome mosaic set into a summer dining room, making it one of the finest examples of Roman decorative work to have survived anywhere in the ancient world.

• The Boathouses: The site's most quietly devastating space. The skeletal remains of over 300 residents who fled toward the waterfront hoping to escape by sea were uncovered here in the 1980s, and they remain exactly where archaeologists found them — a sobering and deeply human reminder of what the eruption actually meant for the people who lived here.