Tips for visiting the Herculaneum excavations.
- The Introvert Traveler
- 2 days ago
- 10 min read
Last visit: October 2025
My rating: 9/10
Visit duration: 2/3 hours
The Pompeii excavations are the second most visited tourist site in Italy, and one of the most visited in the world. However, anyone who thinks that the Herculaneum excavations are its "poor" and negligible twin, investing their time exclusively in Pompeii, would be making a grave mistake. Not only are the Herculaneum excavations a necessary and indispensable complement to a visit to Pompeii, but in some ways they are even superior in terms of visual impact and quality of experience. Indeed, in some ways, were it not for the Villa of the Mysteries and the House of the Vettii, which tip the scales in Pompeii's favor, I might even argue that the charm of the Herculaneum excavations is even greater than that of Pompeii.
Herculaneum is the other truly essential visit in the Vesuvian area, but not as a "second stop" for the sake of completeness: Herculaneum is a different experience in nature, scale, and quality of preservation , and for this very reason it complements Pompeii in an almost dialectical way. If Pompeii is a vast, open city, legible as an urban plan and a social organism, Herculaneum is more compact and more "interior": it doesn't give the same impression of an urban traversal, but it conveys with extraordinary force the substance of private life, the density of the houses, the three-dimensionality of the spaces, the physicality of the buildings. The reason is also geological and taphonomic: the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum had very different effects on the two cities; this results in a fascinating paradox: Herculaneum is smaller and offers "less" quantity, but often offers more quality in the perception of everyday life, because it allows us to intuit the height of the buildings, the organization of the interiors, the relationship between light and shadow, between street and house. For the traveler, therefore, a visit to Herculaneum is not an appendix to Pompeii: it is a different access to Romanity, closer, more tactile, more disturbing in its proximity to reality.
The excavations of Herculaneum and the history of the city
The history of Herculaneum is, in some ways, even more singular than that of Pompeii, because its rediscovery chronologically precedes that of the more famous city and followed profoundly different procedures. The first excavations began in 1738 , during the reign of Charles of Bourbon, not as open-air excavations but as a complex system of underground tunnels dug into the compact volcanic material that had buried the ancient city under over twenty meters of deposits. This approach, initially aimed at recovering works of art for the royal collections, resulted in fragmentary documentation but also allowed for exceptional preservation of structures and materials. Only in the twentieth century was Herculaneum gradually brought to light using modern archaeological criteria. Today, the excavated area is relatively small compared to Pompeii—about 4–5 hectares, less than a quarter of the ancient city—but the level of preservation is extraordinary. The site welcomes an average of around 500,000 visitors a year, much lower numbers than Pompeii, which contribute to a more intimate and less dispersed visitor experience. From a historical perspective, Herculaneum was neither a commercial city in the full sense of the term, nor a major manufacturing center: rather, it was a high-class residential city, frequented by the Roman elite and characterized by prestigious homes, often overlooking the sea, part of the Campanian aristocratic holiday circuit along with Oplontis and Stabiae. It could be said, somewhat exaggeratedly, that Herculaneum was a luxury resort where the Roman elite came for recreation, while Pompeii was in all respects a city with manufacturing facilities, a commercial network, and advanced urbanization. Herculaneum's relationship with Rome was that of a fully Romanized municipal community, but with a primarily residential and cultural rather than economic function. The eruption of 79 AD, which occurred in the midst of the Imperial Age under the reign of Titus, struck Herculaneum at a time when the Roman Empire was at the height of its political, administrative, and technological maturity: a complex urban society, equipped with advanced infrastructure, a widespread monetary economy, and a highly sophisticated residential system. It is precisely this combination of elite status, sudden destruction, and burial methods that makes Herculaneum unique in the global archaeological landscape, complementary to Pompeii but not superimposable, and fundamental to understanding not only how the Romans lived, but how they actually inhabited their private spaces .
In general, I refer you to my post on Pompeii for a more extensive discussion of the historical context of the area and the state and condition of Pompeii and Herculaneum at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius.
The eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. The effects on Herculaneum.
The eruption of 79 AD did not strike Herculaneum and Pompeii as two variants of the same disaster, but as two almost distinct events , determined by a combination of geological, topographical, and temporal factors that produced radically different outcomes. Understanding Herculaneum therefore means abandoning the "Pompeian" mental model and accepting that we are faced with a different eruptive dynamic, another mode of destruction, and, above all, another form of preservation .
Quantitatively, the most immediate difference is in the thickness of the deposits: Pompeii was buried under approximately 4–6 meters of pumice, lapilli, and ash, which accumulated progressively, especially during the initial phase of the eruption, while Herculaneum was covered by over 20 meters of pyroclastic material, largely consisting of very high-temperature flows and surges that rapidly consolidated into a compact bed, similar to a flow of natural concrete. This difference is not marginal: it determines the fact that Pompeii was "crushed" by the weight of the deposits, with progressive collapse of the roofs and upper floors, while Herculaneum was sealed , incorporated, and literally walled up within a mass of rock. While in Pompeii, with the possible exception of the House of the Lovers, where the first floor of the building remained intact, all the buildings collapsed, leaving only the ground floor visible today, in Herculaneum the buildings are generally intact, even on the upper floors; This radically changes the visitor experience: in Pompeii, you walk on a flat terrain, passing the skeletons of buildings swept away by the catastrophic event; wherever you look, you see the surrounding countryside and Vesuvius in the background; in Herculaneum, you proceed through a much more intimate setting, nestled on the slope of a hill, inside an excavation site about thirty meters deep, surrounded by vertical walls, passing through buildings that are still intact, just as they were two thousand years ago. Pompeii is located inland, while Herculaneum was located by the sea, and although today the shoreline has shifted tens of meters, the sea is visible from the higher areas of the excavation.
The main cause of this divergence lies in the geographical position and timing of the eruption. Pompeii is located southeast of Vesuvius, in an area that in the first hours was hit mainly by falling material from above, while Herculaneum, located further west and closer to the volcano, was hit full-blown by the final and most lethal phase of the eruption, when the eruption column collapsed, generating a series of pyroclastic flows. These flows, composed of incandescent gases, very fine ash, and suspended volcanic material, moved at extremely high speeds and with temperatures estimated between 400 and 500°C, overwhelming Herculaneum in a matter of seconds.
The effects on the victims' bodies were therefore profoundly different. In Pompeii, death was caused primarily by asphyxiation and thermal shock, but in a context where many people had time to attempt to escape or seek shelter; the bodies were then progressively covered by lapilli and ash, creating the voids that later allowed for the creation of casts. In Herculaneum, however, the population was caught by surprise in the most extreme phase of the event: death was instantaneous, due to an immediate collapse of vital functions due to the heat and gases. Archaeological evidence—particularly the remains found in the arches along the ancient coastline—shows skeletons that were often fractured, with traces consistent with exposure to extremely high temperatures; in some cases , vitrification and bone alterations have been detected, indicating rapid dehydration of the soft tissues. In Herculaneum, no voids formed in the sediment: the bodies decomposed in a saturated, compact environment, which directly preserved the bones.
Even with regard to buildings and furnishings, Herculaneum is unique. The extremely high temperatures of the pyroclastic flows carbonized the wood without completely destroying it, creating a sort of "solid imprint" of doors, beams, stairs, mezzanines, furniture, beds, wardrobes, even cradles. In Pompeii, the wood has almost always disappeared; in Herculaneum, it is often preserved in the form of charcoal, allowing for a three-dimensional reconstruction of the living spaces unparalleled in the Roman world. This also applies to the upper floors: while in Pompeii they were largely collapsed, in Herculaneum many buildings retain their second floors, offering a vertical perception of the city that Pompeii cannot provide.
The eruption also profoundly changed the territory and the coastline. At the time of the eruption, Herculaneum faced directly onto the sea; today the ancient city is located several hundred meters from the shoreline. The eruptive materials advanced towards the sea, filling part of it and shifting the coast, creating a new, more advanced coastline. This explains why the port facilities and arches are now located "inland", and why the ancient city appears to be set in a sort of artificial canyon compared to the modern town.
Another marked difference between the two archaeological sites is that while in Pompeii the excavations (still ongoing) are essentially exposed, with archaeologists only needing to unearth a few meters of sediment, in Herculaneum the ancient city, submerged under tens of meters of sediment, has been overlaid by a modern city. In Herculaneum, therefore, the excavations are incorporated into a city, and to expand the excavations, core samples are being dug beneath the modern city to determine the true extent of the ancient city, which has yet to be discovered.
In short, Pompeii and Herculaneum do not represent two versions of the same tragedy, but two complementary outcomes of a single volcanic event, shaped by wind direction, distance from the volcano, topography, and the phase of the eruption. Pompeii offers us the image of a city caught in the midst of a progressive catastrophe, readable as a whole urban organism; Herculaneum, on the other hand, offers us a hyper-dense capsule of private life, frozen by the most violent moment of the eruption. It is precisely this gap—quantitative, qualitative, and perceptual—that makes visiting both essential: only by establishing a dialogue between Pompeii and Herculaneum can we fully understand the destructive power of Vesuvius and, paradoxically, the extraordinary capacity of geology to become an archive of human history.
The visit to Herculaneum
Visiting Herculaneum is a radically different experience from Pompeii, more intimate, more concentrated, and, in many ways, more intense on a perceptual level. Access to the site is from above, and the descent into the archaeological area produces an almost theatrical effect: one literally enters a deeply excavated city, embedded beneath the modern city, with walls of volcanic material that immediately make the violence of the eruption evident. The visit is less strenuous than Pompeii and can be approached in a more linear manner, but it requires a keen eye for detail, because it is precisely in the details that Herculaneum reveals its exceptionality. Among the private homes, the House of the Wooden Partition is a must-see: the charred sliding door, which has survived for two thousand years, gives an almost domestic sense of space and makes daily life more tangible than any fresco. Continuing into the city, the Suburban Baths represent one of the best-preserved examples of a Roman bath complex, with rooms still clearly visible in their functional layout and impressively preserved wooden and decorative structures. Also of extraordinary importance is the House of the Relief of Telephus, one of the city's most luxurious residences, which testifies to the aristocratic and residential character of Herculaneum, with state rooms, refined decorations, and a complex spatial layout on multiple levels. Also worthy of attention are the shops overlooking the decumanus, often preserved with mezzanines and charred shelves, which allow us to grasp the continuity between living space and economic activity.
The most impactful stop is undoubtedly the arches along the ancient coastline, where the piles of skeletons of victims fleeing towards the sea were discovered; many victims of the eruption sought refuge here, near the port, while seeking safety by sea. It is one of the most emotionally powerful sites in the entire Roman world, and offers a direct understanding of the dynamics of sudden death caused by pyroclastic flows. Even more so here, compared to Pompeii, I believe what I said in the post on Pompeii regarding the emotional aspects of the experience holds true.
The overall experience of the visit is shorter than Pompeii, but no less intense: Herculaneum doesn't ask to be traversed, but rather to be mentally inhabited, observed slowly, lingering on the thresholds, the rooms, the surviving objects. It's a visit that impresses not with its monumentality, but with its proximity, and leaves the visitor with the rare sensation of having walked not so much through an ancient city, but rather inside the homes of real people, captured at the most violent moment in Vesuvian history.
Practical advice
From a practical standpoint, a visit to Herculaneum is relatively easy. The archaeological site is much more compact than Pompeii and can be explored in two to three hours at most. However, I don't recommend combining it with Pompeii on the same day: Herculaneum deserves a separate visit, with ample time and no overlaps, but even if you're looking for a "hit-and-run" experience, visiting both Pompeii and Herculaneum in a single day, including transportation, becomes too demanding a tour de force, especially since Pompeii alone, in my opinion, deserves a full day's visit.
The site is less flat than Pompeii and slopes down from the hillside toward the sea; however, regular sneakers are sufficient for visiting. Compared to Pompeii, there are a few ramps and stairs to climb, but nothing too demanding.
In the summer months, the heat can be stifling, especially in the more remote areas, so water, sunscreen, and a hat are highly recommended, even if your overall stay is shorter than in Pompeii.
Access is not normally as congested as at the Pompeii site, but it is still advisable to purchase tickets in advance, especially during high season.
Logistically, Herculaneum is very easy to reach from Naples via the Circumvesuviana train, getting off at the Ercolano Scavi stop, from which the entrance is just a few minutes' walk away. For those visiting the Vesuvian area over several days, the ideal option is to stay overnight in Naples and dedicate a separate day to each site.
The only refreshment point is located immediately outside the excavation area and is limited to a few vending machines selling some packaged food. After a morning spent wandering the archaeological site, I was extremely envious as I found myself starving in front of the sad-looking vending machines while some of the camp's caretakers nibbled on tasty sandwiches they'd prudently brought from home. So, my advice is to stock up on some tasty takeaway food, which you can certainly get in Naples before your departure. I didn't find any quality restaurants within easy walking distance of the archaeological site, and the businesses along the road connecting the excavations to the station all have the sinister feel of tourist traps.
Unlike Pompeii, Herculaneum doesn't require complex orientation: a paper map is useful but not essential; the city's layout is a typical Roman "chessboard" one, so simply following the natural flow of the streets is enough to visit all the buildings and the entire site; a map will still be useful for identifying the most valuable structures.
