Parco Archeologico di Ercolano (Scavi archeologici di Ercolano)

Under modern Ercolano lies a Roman seaside town stopped in its tracks by Vesuvius in AD 79. Where Pompeii preserves outlines, Herculaneum keeps timber upper storeys, boat sheds and organic remains, an unusually close view of everyday life on the Bay of Naples.

Why it matters

When Vesuvius erupted in AD 79 it buried Pompeii under ash and lapilli, while Herculaneum disappeared beneath pyroclastic surges and flows. That difference in burial material gave this smaller resort town a different afterlife: timber door frames, staircases, shelving, boats and carbonised organic matter survived where they usually perish. When UNESCO inscribed the Archaeological Areas of Pompei, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata in 1997 (cultural criteria (iii), (iv) and (v)), it placed the two towns in a single breath: the vast commercial expanse of Pompeii against the smaller but better-preserved remains of the residential resort of Herculaneum. Only part of the ancient city has been uncovered; the rest still sleeps beneath the streets of the modern town, which makes every metre of the excavated quarter feel denser and more domestic.

What to notice

Descend into the site and read it vertically as well as horizontally. The Galleria Martusciello, reopened to the public on 15 July 2026, is a tunnel of more than one hundred metres cut through the very volcanic deposits that buried the city, linking the level of the modern town with the ancient shoreline. At the bottom, the fornici — the vaulted boat shelters that once lined the beach — held the remains of about 300 people who had fled to the water and waited for a rescue that never came. The Antiquarium gathers finds from twentieth-century excavations: the statue of Marcus Nonius Balbus, the bronze Hydra, garden sculpture from the House of the Deer and frescoes from the Villa dei Papiri, alongside a room devoted to the objects carried by the fugitives. In the separate Boat Pavilion stands the carbonised hull of a Roman vessel over nine metres long, found in the 1980s near the ancient beach and interpreted by the park as a military launch sent to rescue the town.

Context and history

Digging here began in the mid-18th century, when tunnels bored through the solidified volcanic matter brought statues, bronzes and papyri to the surface and drew Grand Tour travellers to a city they visited underground, by torchlight. UNESCO notes that this tunnel network is still the basis for visiting the ancient theatre, which lies buried beneath modern Ercolano. Systematic open-air excavation resumed in the twentieth century under the archaeologist Amedeo Maiuri, whose layout of the site as an open-air museum shaped how visitors still move through it today, and large parts of the ancient town remain deliberately or practically unexplored under the modern city. In 2023 a buffer zone around UNESCO site 829 was approved, extending the protected landscape towards Portici and Torre del Greco and giving the park a mandate to work with neighbouring municipalities on the territory as a whole.