Tours
Pompeii
A Roman city of 66 hectares, some 50 excavated: forum, painted houses, an amphitheatre from 70 BC. Open air, on ancient paving.
From the summit of Vesuvius looking south: the plain down to the bay and the Lattari mountains, the land the eruption of AD 79 buried.
- From Naples
- 40min
- Visit
- half a day
- Pairs with
- Mount Vesuvius, Herculaneum, Sorrento
Pompeii is a Roman town that stayed under the ash of the 79 AD eruption and has been uncovered, bit by bit, since the eighteenth century. The park covers 66 hectares, roughly 50 of them excavated including the suburban areas. It is not a single monument: it is a whole inhabited town, with its forum, houses, shops and necropolises outside the gates.
You come for the scale of it. You walk the same paved streets, step into painted rooms, and read the town through its regiones and insulae, the grid Giuseppe Fiorelli laid over it in 1858. It is large and open to the sky, so pace matters more than any list of things to tick off.
Photo: DimiTalen · CC0
What you see
The Forum
The public square of the ancient town, ringed by the buildings that mattered: the Temple of Jupiter, the basilica, the sanctuary of Apollo, the sacred precincts. It is where the civic and religious layout of Pompeii becomes legible.
Villa of the Mysteries
Outside the walls, past Porta Ercolano. Its great frieze runs unbroken across three walls and counts among the best-preserved ancient paintings: Dionysus with Ariadne at the centre, female figures, fauns and maenads along the sides. A reconstructed wine press stands nearby.
The Amphitheatre
Built in 70 BC, soon after the colony was founded, it is the oldest known Roman amphitheatre and held up to twenty thousand people. It sits on the edge of the town precisely so that crowd could move, right by the Piazza Anfiteatro entrance.
The roofed houses
The House of the Vettii, the House of the Dioscuri, the House of the Silver Wedding: roofed buildings the park itself recommends when the sun is hard. You step into shade, and the painted walls are where they were built, not in a museum.
Getting there with us
- We set you down at the gate. The park suggests Piazza Anfiteatro, which is also where the step-free route starts; the other two entrances are Porta Marina, on via Villa dei Misteri, and Piazza Esedra.
- Pompeii’s yellow restricted zone applies to vehicles over seven metres. A car or a van stays outside it, so there is no gate to pay and no detour to make.
- You can go in at one gate and come out at another: tell us where, and the car moves round to meet you.
Worth knowing
- Tickets come from the park’s own booking site, pompeii.vivaticket.it, and are best sorted before you leave: we do not sell them.
- You walk on ancient paving that is uneven, with small steps up and down and no dropped kerbs: closed shoes with a thick sole. The “Pompeii for all” route — over 3.5 km from Piazza Anfiteatro to the Forum, out at Piazza Esedra via the Antiquarium lift — has ramps steeper than 8%.
- There is not much shade. The park points to the Triangular Forum, the Porta Stabia necropolis, the pine grove on Viale delle Ginestre and the Antiquarium; bring a hat, sunscreen, and refill from the drinking fountains inside.
- If you want a guided visit, book it directly with a licensed tourist guide. We take care of the driving.
On the same day
Mount Vesuviusfrom Naples 50minA crater 580 metres across at 1,175 m, and the whole bay from up there. The last stretch is on foot, about twenty minutes uphill.
Herculaneumfrom Naples 25minFour and a half hectares of Roman town under the modern one: upper floors still standing, charred wood, the ancient beach with its boat sheds.
Sorrentofrom Naples 1h 10minA terrace over the bay, and the Marina Piccola harbour where the Capri hydrofoils leave from. We drop you at the pier and pick you up there.