Herculaneum: €16, and what is closed right now

Herculaneum costs €16 full, opens every day of the year except December 25, and has 2 areas closed with no reopening date: the Villa dei Papiri and the Ancient Theater.

€16, and the passes that undercut it

The full ticket is €16 and EU citizens aged 18 to 25 pay €2 (2026). Prices are in euros.

Then the arithmetic worth doing: the annual pass costs €30 individual, €58 family and €5 for 18 to 25s. Two visits on the individual pass already beat two full tickets, and the family version pays for itself on the first day out for most groups.

Entry is free on the first Sunday of the month and on April 25, June 2 and November 4, under the national scheme described on our page about free museum days.

2 areas closed, with no date attached

The Villa dei Papiri, closed for excavation and maintenance, and the Ancient Theater, closed for restoration, were both shut in 2026 and neither has a published reopening date.

This is the sentence competitors leave out, and it is the one that changes a visit. If you are coming for the Villa dei Papiri specifically, check ercolano.beniculturali.it before you buy anything.

No date means no date. A site that promises you the villa is selling a description, not access.

Two timetables, one closing day

From March 16 to October 14 the park runs 8:30 am to 7:30 pm with last entry at 6 pm. From October 15 to March 15 it runs 8:30 am to 5 pm with last entry at 3:30 pm (2026).

On Italian signs those read 08:30 to 19:30 and 08:30 to 17:00, with last entries at 18:00 and 15:30.

December 25 is the only annual closure, which makes this the one big Campanian site that opens on January 1.

The train: EAV line L1

From the Naples stations of Porta Nolana and Garibaldi, EAV line L1 towards Sorrento is the only Vesuvian line that serves both Ercolano Scavi and Pompei Scavi-Villa dei Misteri. The timetable in force is the one valid from March 28, 2026.

The other Vesuvian lines, L4 to Poggiomarino, L6 to Sarno and L8 to Baiano, do not help you here.

Getting off at Ercolano Scavi puts you on the street that runs down to the entrance, which is the reason this stop is worth the change of platform in Naples.

The fares EAV does not publish

2 things you need are missing: EAV publishes neither point-to-point fares nor real service frequency as readable pages, and the Unico Campania fare engine it refers you to does not show prices on the page either.

So no fare and no frequency appears here. EAV's freephone number is 800² 211388². In July 2026 the operator published a reorganization of replacement bus services on the Naples to Baiano line, a reminder that this network changes without much notice.

For the two sites together, see Pompeii, which is 4 stops further down the same line and works on completely different ticket rules.

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