Pompeii, Herculaneum or Vesuvius: what each is and who runs it

The short answer

Three different places, three different managers, and none of them in Naples. Pompeii and Herculaneum are Roman towns buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, in the words of the UNESCO decision that inscribed them.[5] Each is now its own archaeological park. Vesuvius is the volcano, and the path to its crater is run by a national park.

Choose by what you want from the visit. The Herculaneum park says its town is the only city in the Roman world that preserves wood as a building material and in its furnishings.[8] The Pompeii park manages not only the ancient city but also outlying sites such as Oplontis.[1] The crater is a different kind of visit altogether: a managed trail on the volcano, not an excavated town.

Pompeii: the ancient city, and a park with several sites

The Archaeological Park of Pompeii took that name under a ministerial decree of 12 January 2017; before that it was a superintendency of the Ministry of Culture.[1] Its remit is wider than the town of Pompeii. The park's own history page lists the Oplontis excavations in Torre Annunziata, Stabiae and Boscoreale among the sites in its jurisdiction.[1] Its Oplontis page places the remains in the modern city of Torre Annunziata and says the Villa of Poppaea is the only monument of ancient Oplontis currently open to visitors.[2]

The park's ticket page lists tickets for Pompeii and for those other sites, including a multi-site ticket.[3] XTOUR's reading is that "Pompeii" on a ticket or a sign may mean the park rather than the ancient town, so it is worth checking which site a ticket covers before buying.

Herculaneum: a separate park, dated differently by the two parks

Herculaneum used to be managed with Pompeii: the Pompeii park's history page describes an earlier special superintendency covering Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae. The same page says that in 2017, the year of Pompeii's own decree, Herculaneum became the Archaeological Park of Herculaneum, independent of Pompeii.[1] The Herculaneum park's own history page gives a different year: it says the park was created in 2016 as an autonomous institute.[6] XTOUR reports both and does not choose between them.

The park's own website is ercolano.cultura.gov.it, which carries the Ministry of Culture's name alongside the park's and has its own pages for tickets, directions and accessibility.[7] Its ticket page lists the park's own tickets and does not mention Pompeii. It does say that the regional Campania Artecard pass can be used to enter Herculaneum; XTOUR has not read the Artecard's own terms and does not say which other sites it covers.[7] The Herculaneum park says the pyroclastic flow buried the town under about 20 metres of volcanic material, and that tools, architectural elements and wooden furniture were carbonised.[8] The explainer on what the eruption preserved goes into why the two towns look so different.

One World Heritage property, several sites

UNESCO treats the towns as one World Heritage property, the Archaeological Areas of Pompei, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata, inscribed in 1997. The inscription speaks of the towns of Pompei and Herculaneum "and their associated villas", and the Pompeii park's UNESCO office calls the property a serial site.[4][5] XTOUR has not read UNESCO's own list of the property's component parts, so it does not say which excavations they are. One listing does not mean one visit: Pompeii and Herculaneum are run by two different parks, as the sections above show.

Vesuvius: the volcano, and a trail with its own rules

Vesuvius is not an archaeological site, and XTOUR records the mountain as a natural feature. The path to the crater is trail No. 5, "Il Gran Cono", which the Vesuvius National Park's trail page says starts from a square at 1,000 metres in the municipality of Ercolano, with tickets sold only online through one authorised seller.[10] The explainer on visiting Vesuvius and Etna sets out the park's other access rules, including its last-minute tickets and the guides who accompany walkers.

What Naples has to do with it

Naples is a base, not a container. XTOUR records Pompeii, Herculaneum and Vesuvius as reached from Naples, never as part of it. XTOUR has no routing data, so it does not say how long any of these journeys takes or whether two of them fit in one day.

Finds from the buried towns are also in Naples itself: the National Archaeological Museum of Naples says on its history page that the relics from the Vesuvian towns, with the Farnese collection, are still its core collections.[9] The guide to Naples' Archaeological Museum and Capodimonte covers what is shown there.

Comparing the three

What XTOUR does not tell you

XTOUR does not publish opening hours, prices, last-entry times or closures for any of the three, although each operator's page sets them out. Read each operator's page shortly before you go.

For the region as a whole, see the Italy travel guide.