Naples Archaeological Museum Tickets: €20 at the ticket office, and the wrong price everywhere else
The full price list, before anything else
I'm writing this part generously, because it's what the rest of the internet gets wrong. These are the museum's prices, not mine.
- Full price, €20 — at the ticket office in Piazza Museo 18/19, or booked on the museum's website. It's the same price in both cases: the museum explicitly states "booking fee €0.00".
- Reduced, €2 — for those aged between 18 and 25 who are citizens of an EU or EEA (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway) country, non-EU countries with reciprocity agreements (Switzerland and Uruguay), or non-EU citizens with a residence permit. The age limit "is considered to be exceeded from the day after the 25th birthday": on your 25th birthday, you still pay €2.
- Free — under 18 of any nationality, Italian teachers with certification, people with disabilities.
- Special, €10 — for those with a Campania Artecard who have already used up their free entries on the pass.
- OpenMANN ordinary, €25 — the annual pass. I'll discuss it below, because the maths deserves its own paragraph.
Booking is optional for individuals and mandatory for groups and schools, from 10 to 30 people. If you want to book, the museum's official ticket office is the museum's channel; CoopCulture also sells by phone at 081 0098800, every day from 9 AM to 5 PM. If you don't want to book, don't book: in my eight years in front of that ticket office, I only saw a real queue on free entry days and a few spring weekends, not on a Thursday in October at ten in the morning.
It doesn't cost 22 euros and isn't valid for two days
This is the main correction on the site, so I'll make it plain and simple. The full-price ticket for the MANN costs €20. Not 22 euros. And it is not valid for two consecutive days.
The two-day policy did exist, and it's the origin of all the confusion: it started on Saturday, March 4, 2023, along with the Lucio Dalla exhibition, and it ended. Since then, no one has updated anything. Travel guides repeat it, Italian blogs repeat it, and the overview generated by Google above the results repeats it, which is why people arrive at the ticket office convinced they can return the next day with the same ticket. You can't. If you return, you buy a new ticket.
There's a practical consequence that's more important than the correction itself: since the ticket covers only one day and the ticket office closes at 6:30 PM, the museum should be approached as a single visit and not as a 48-hour pass. I've written a separate page on how much time you actually need, because the museum, quite honestly, refuses to publish a recommended duration: how much time is needed to visit the MANN.
The six options sold online, and how much they charge above the ticket office price
These are "starting from" prices from GetYourGuide and they fluctuate: I'm writing them as they are at the time of writing. All six have free cancellation up to 24 hours before, which is exactly what the ticket office doesn't give you.
The cheapestNaples: National Archaeological Museum Audio Guide
The best sellerNaples: National Archaeological Museum Ticket and Audio App
City passCampania: Artecard 3–7 days or Gold/Lite 365
Priority entranceNaples: National Archaeological Museum with digital guide
Live guideNaples: Guided tour of the National Archaeological Museum
PrivateNaples: Private guided tour of the National Archaeological Museum
The first three are not tours: they are different ways to buy admission, or not to buy it at all. The audio guide for €3.99 at the time of writing is just a commentary on your phone, and the ticket is not included: added to the €20 at the ticket office, it remains the cheapest package, but you need to know what you are buying. The ticket plus audio app for €26 at the time of writing is the best-selling product in its category: it's the official ticket plus an app, and it's €6 more than the ticket office price. The Campania Artecard for €27 at the time of writing is a city card and only makes sense if you are moving around a fair bit.
The other three add something different from just a ticket. The entrance with digital guide for €34 puts priority access alongside the recorded commentary; the two-hour guided tour for €42 and the private tour for €45 include a person. I have broken down all six options one by one in all the tours, really compared, and I have dedicated a page to the two with a real guide in guided tours at MANN.
| Naples: National Archaeological Museum Audio Guide | Best sellerNaples: National Archaeological Museum Ticket and Audio App | Naples: Guided Tour of the National Archaeological Museum | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price | €3.99 | €26 | €42 |
| Admission ticket | Not included | Included | Included |
| Above the €20 ticket office price | It's an add-on, not an admission ticket | €6 | The rest pays for two hours of guiding |
| About me | An app | An app | A real-life guide |
| Rating and reviews | 4.0 out of 173 | 4.2 out of 1,188 | 4.8 out of 605 |
| The weak point | "I didn't always find the things described" | «the audio guide is an app on your phone» | Audio guides not always available |
| Free cancellation | ✓ Up to 24 h before | ✓ Up to 24 h before | ✓ Up to 24 h before |
| View → | Book → | View → |
The ticket office closes at 18.30 and at 19.00 they start closing operations, even if the door says 19.30. This means that a ticket bought at 18.25 buys you barely half an hour inside a museum with 125 rooms. If you arrive at that time and don't have a specific reason, come back tomorrow: it costs the same and you'll get something out of it.
The annual pass costs €5 more than a ticket
This is the most useful piece of information on this page and almost no one writes it. The standard OpenMANN costs €25 and lasts 365 days from first use, with unlimited entries, priority access, and included exhibitions. A single ticket costs €20. The difference between seeing the museum once and being able to enter for a whole year is five euros.
Other options cost even less: Young 18–25 at €5, Academy for EU university students at €10, Family for two people or more at €23, Corporate for ten or more at €20. There's also an ANM promotion: until December 31, 2026, ANM subscribers pay €20 for the adult card instead of €25.
If you live in Campania, or if you're in Naples for more than two days and already know you'll be back, the choice is simple arithmetic. It's worth mentioning because a good part of the museum might be closed on the day you visit, and a subscription turns a truncated visit into a free second attempt: see what's closed now.
When the same museum costs less, and when it costs nothing
What works
- From 19.00 on MANNight evenings, tickets drop to €10, with last entry at 22.30 and closing at 23.30.
- Il September 26, 2026, in the evening, the ticket costs €1.
- With a Artecard MANN is the first name on the pass's list of free entries; once those are used up, you pay the special reduced rate of €10.
- La first Sunday of the month and on other free days in 2026, there is no charge.
Good to know beforehand
- On free days the Egyptian collection, the Gabinetto Segreto, and the Magna Grecia section remain closed. These are three of the things people come to see.
- On free days, tickets cannot be pre-purchased: they can only be collected at the ticket office.
- The priority access that some options promise is not valid on free days.
- The museum is closed on Tuesdays, and if Tuesday is a public holiday, it opens and moves its closing day to the following Wednesday.
I do the full calculation for the free Sunday, along with the other museums in the city, in Free Naples: what really is free.
What €20 doesn't buy you
The ticket gives you access to whatever is open that day, and at MANN, that's not a formality. The Alexander Mosaic is not visible: it has been under restoration since 2021, and the two viewing windows into the worksite are inside the mosaics collection, which closes from 16 September to 30 November 2026. No reopening date has been published. If you're going for that, read first where the Alexander Mosaic is.
Then there are the rooms that the museum itself doesn't guarantee: the Numismatics, Magna Grecia, the upper floors of Prehistory. Their words: "it is not possible to guarantee opening; in case of specific interest, visitors are invited to ask for information directly at the ticket office before entering the Museum." And immediately after: "Such an exceptional event cannot result in a refund of the ticket already purchased." Check the collection opening plan on the morning you leave: it changes every few weeks.
The rest, room by room, is in what is closed now.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a ticket to the National Archaeological Museum of Naples cost?
Full price €20, reduced €2 for those aged between 18 and 25 who fall into the specified categories, free for under 18s. The pre-sale fee on the museum's website is zero, so booking from home costs exactly the same as buying at the ticket office. Online packages start from €3.99 for the audio guide alone and go up to €45 for a private tour: all are compared in all tours.
I read that it costs €22 and is valid for two consecutive days: is that true?
No, and it's worth repeating because you'll find it written almost everywhere. That scheme started on March 4, 2023, with the Lucio Dalla exhibition and has ended. Today, a full-price ticket costs €20 and covers the day you enter. If you want to return, the OpenMANN annual pass for €25 is valid for a whole year, five euros more than a single entry.
Is it better to book online or buy at the ticket office?
It only depends on how much cancellation is worth to you. At the ticket office, you pay €20 and there's no pre-sale fee; on the museum's website, you pay the same amount. Platforms ask for a few euros more and in return let you cancel up to 24 hours beforehand: the ticket with audio app, for example, is €6 more than at the ticket office. If your plans are still uncertain, those six euros buy you something. If you already know you're going, no.
Is the Gabinetto Segreto paid separately?
No. It's in room 65 on the first floor, it's included in the €20 ticket, and it doesn't require any separate booking. The only real caveat is that it remains closed on free entry days, along with the Egyptian collection and Magna Grecia. What's open and what's not I update in the closed rooms of MANN.