Villa Regina and Antiquarium

Is it worth the trip?

If you hold the €25 Pompeii+ ticket, yes: Villa Regina and the Antiquarium are already paid for, and the park’s free shuttle brings you here in a quarter of an hour. It is the place around Pompeii where you see how the land was farmed rather than how the town lived, and the vines growing again in the Roman root holes make the point better than any panel.

As a separate outing it is a small site. The villa is one farmhouse in a hollow surrounded by the modern town, and the most famous things found at Boscoreale are not here: the frescoes of the Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor hang in New York, Naples, Paris and Mariemont, and the Boscoreale Treasure is mostly in the Louvre. The €8 ticket is fair for what is here, but it is not a reason on its own to make the journey from Naples.

Getting there and what it costs

The entrances are on Via Settetermini and Viale Villa Regina in Boscoreale, about 1 km north-west of Pompeii’s Villa of the Mysteries. The Circumvesuviana railway has a Villa Regina stop, and by car the A3 motorway has exits at Torre Annunziata Sud (towards Salerno) and Boscoreale (towards Naples) (the operator). Bus stops of the regional operator EAV are mapped about 170 m away; no public car park is mapped at the gate, only private and customers’ car parks 140–230 m off (OpenStreetMap).

From Pompeii, the park’s Pompeii Artebus shuttle 1 leaves Piazza Esedra every hour from 09.30, with a break from 13.00 to 14.00, stops at Porta Ercolano by the Villa of the Mysteries to pick up passengers, and reaches Boscoreale about fifteen minutes later. It is free for park visitors, subject to space. The last run that takes passengers out leaves at 15.00 in winter and 17.00 in summer; the one after it runs out empty to bring visitors back (the operator).

It is open daily, 09.00 to 19.00 from 16 March to 14 October (last entry 18.00) and 09.00 to 17.00 from 15 October to 15 March (last entry 16.00), and closed on 25 December and 1 January. A ticket for Boscoreale alone is €8, or €2 for EU citizens aged 18 to 24. Villa Regina and the Antiquarium are also included in the €25 Pompeii+ ticket, which covers the ancient city, the Villa of the Mysteries and the Villa of Diomedes, and in the €30 three-day ticket that adds Oplontis and the Stabiae sites; both include the shuttle. Entry is free on the first Sunday of the month (pompeiisites.org, tariffs from 12 January 2026, read 22 October 2026 — check before travelling).

The villas under Boscoreale

In Roman times this countryside was farmland despite its closeness to Pompeii, specialising in wine and olive oil (en.wikipedia), and Pleiades calls the area especially well known for its country villas of the first century BC. Many were found towards the end of the 19th century, often by treasure hunters, and buried again (en.wikipedia). Five of them are described below; none can be visited.

Villa della Pisanella. First found in 1868 (Pleiades; it.wikipedia) or 1876 (en.wikipedia), and explored between 1894 and 1898 before being reburied (it.wikipedia). It was a farm villa of about 0.1 hectares with baths, and its wine cellar held 84 dolia. In 1895 a chest in the wine-pressing room yielded the Boscoreale Treasure: more than a hundred pieces of silver tableware, gold jewellery and about a thousand gold coins (en.wikipedia; published counts of the silver differ). It was sold off to dealers and collectors; most of it is now in the Louvre, and some pieces are in the British Museum (en.wikipedia).

Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor. Built between about 50 and 30 BC — published dates differ within that range (de.wikipedia; en.wikipedia) — and excavated in 1899–1900 by Vincenzo De Prisco. Its late Second Style frescoes were cut from the walls, auctioned and are now in museums in Europe and North America, after which the excavation was filled in again (de.wikipedia): among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, the Louvre and the Musée royal de Mariemont in Belgium (it.wikipedia). A bedroom reconstructed from its frescoes has been a feature of the Metropolitan’s Roman gallery since 2007 (en.wikipedia). The name comes from a bronze drinking vessel scratched with it; a bronze seal suggests that Lucius Herennius Florus may have been the owner (de.wikipedia).

Villa del fondo Ippolito Zurlo, in the contrada Giuliana, was excavated by De Prisco in 1897 and reburied (Pleiades). The Villa of Asellius was excavated under De Prisco in 1903 and 1904 on the property of Giuseppe De Martino; wall paintings and objects were recovered before it was reburied, and its exact location is poorly recorded (Pleiades). The villa on the D’Acunzo property, near Boscoreale station, was excavated and reburied in 1903 (Pleiades); its finds include the remains of a wooden and bronze balance and seven statuettes of gods now in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (it.wikipedia). Finds from the D’Acunzo villa and from the villa of Asellius are among those shown in the Antiquarium’s second room (the operator).

History

Villa Regina dates from the 1st century BC and was remodelled under Augustus and again under the Julio-Claudian emperors; it was decorated in the Third and Fourth Styles of wall painting. After its discovery in 1977 it was explored in the early 1980s and uncovered completely; a cart and a press were found inside, and casts were taken of the roots of the vines (it.wikipedia). Pollen analysis has identified the trees and flowers grown around it, and confirmed that grapes were cultivated on the estate (en.wikipedia). An oil lamp of the 3rd to 5th century AD shows that someone tunnelled into the buried villa in late Roman times (en.wikipedia).

The Antiquarium was opened in 1991 by the archaeological superintendency of Pompeii (it.wikipedia), in a building on land given by the town of Boscoreale (Ministry of Culture). It is now one of the sites of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, alongside Pompeii, Oplontis and Stabiae (the operator).