About Marco Esposito
I’m Marco Esposito. I was born in Ercolano, a ten-minute walk from the excavation gate on Corso Resina, and for fifteen years I’ve made my living walking visitors down into the ancient town buried twenty metres below my own. This site is that walk in written form.
Why I built this
The questions I get asked on Corso Resina are always the same, and a lot of the answers printed elsewhere are stale. People arrive believing the Villa of the Papyri is open (it is closed, with no reopening date announced), that Herculaneum needs a full day (two to three hours does it), or that the audio app bundled with the cheap tickets will carry the visit (reviewers are lukewarm, and I say so). So I wrote the answers down: a complete guide to the site, the real ticket numbers, and honest reviews of the six bookable products worth comparing.
One piece of hometown context: until 1969 this town was called Resina. The name changed. The ancient streets underneath did not.
What I do — and what I don’t
I compare the tickets and tours, read the traveller reviews, and give straight advice about which suits whom — including, where it’s true, the advice that the €16 gate ticket and no booking at all is the right call. I am not the Archaeological Park of Herculaneum and this is not its official site; official notices and ticketing live at ercolano.cultura.gov.it. I’m not a tour operator either and I don’t sell tickets: when you book through this site, you do it on GetYourGuide.
How the site is funded
I earn a small affiliate commission when you book through my links, at no extra cost to you. That’s what keeps the site free. It never changes what I recommend — the cheapest product’s weak audio app gets called weak in its own review, commission or not. The full mechanics are in the affiliate disclosure.
Questions or corrections? Get in touch.