POMPEII - PLANNING A VISIT

Pompeii takes a good, full day to explore. At the very least, it takes three to four hours, minimum, to pop into the major sights. Remember that it is a city, so a lot of walking is involved.

Openiing Hours:
The Pompeii archeological site is open daily April through Oct 8:30am to 7:30pm, November through Mar 8:30am–5pm. The last entry is 90 minutes before closing.

Prices:
Admission costs €11 and is good for only one day, but you can also buy a combined ticket for both Pompeii and Herculaneum (plus three other ancient sites in the area) for €20 that`s valid for three days.

The ticket booth at the archaeological site will give you a free map and all you really need to explore Pompeii. There`s also a tourist office in modern Pompei at Via Sacra 1 (tel. +39-081-850-7255; www.pompeiisites.org), open Monday to Friday 9am to 2:30pm, Saturday and Sunday 9am to 2pm.

The map the ticket office hands out is pretty good for finding every site in the ruined town, but Pompeii is one place where investing in a nice guidebook full of color photos at the gift shop before you explore is worth your while to get detailed background.

Immediately outside the Pompeii gates and the railway station there is a whole tourist village, once inside the Pompeii ruins facilities are minimal. There is just one small restaurant/cafe and rest room facilities in the middle of the site and rest rooms at the entrance. The whole site is also very exposed with minimal shade, so it`s imperative you bring lots of sunscreen, a hat and a water bottle (a small one is fine: there are lots of ancient street fountains where you can refill). The cobbled and rough nature of the surface means that wheelchairs and prams are impractical. Most small children will get bored very quickly.

Note: at the time of writing they do not accept credit cards at Pompeii

Be prepared for crowds, especially on weekends (they average 4,700 visitors a day, up to 22,000 people on holidays).

The roads are made of stone slabs, rutted deep with centuries` worth of wagon wheels. At most intersections are crosswalks of raised stepping stones, so citizens wouldn`t have to step in the mucky, muddy streets. Besides the public buildings and mansions, Pompeii is full of buildings that may be more ordinary, but are just as fascinating for the insight they offer into daily life in an ancient Roman city. Poke around to find the shops with counters still in place and paintings describing the wares sold, bakeries with millstones and brick ovens in the backyard, even fast-food parlors with deep bowls set into the counters where prepared food were kept hot.

The Pompeii site is vast. If you come on a tour you don`t have much control of your itinerary. At about 10 a.m. the queues for tickets can be long, but by 1 p.m. are often non-existent. Allow at least half a day to get the feel of the place. Resist the tourist guides, get a map and a guidebook and be independent. Part of the fun is finding a quiet spot and just wandering down an empty Roman street.

Don`t get too interested too early. Most people go in by the main entrance at the Porta Marina (the sea gate) and quickly come to the Forum, or the main piazza of the ancient town. It`s impressive enough in its way and many new visitors spend ages there trying to work out what every building was. Don`t. There are even more impressive things to come, brilliantly preserved bath buildings, a working-condition brothel and an amphitheatre, for example.
Take any opportunity offered. A lot of the best private houses of the town are locked for much of the time. But custodians do open them occasionally. If you spot an open door, go through it. All kinds of surprises might lie inside: little mosaic fountains, reconstructed gardens, the carefully crafted marble couches on which upmarket Romans dined.

Once you are inside the site there is little in the way of information available to make sense of what you are viewing. For most independent visitors who want information, the audio tours are a good choice. You can rent them at a separate kiosk by the admissions desk. You need to provide an id, passport or credit card which will be returned when you return the audio device. Like most such devices worldwide, they are a bit dry and do tend to drone on a bit but there are enough nuggets of great information to make them worthwhile and are not expensive.
Ticket Prices are subject to change, without notice, per the Italian Tourism Board. We do our best to make sure we display most current prices.