Pompeii Tours and Tickets: Frequently Asked Questions

Guided walks at the gate start at $34 for two hours with an archaeologist and the entry ticket included. Half-day trips from Sorrento run about $59 to $116 depending on whether Vesuvius is attached. Full days from Rome sit between $68 and $105, and private guides run from about $105 per person or $319 per group.

Pompeii Express costs €20 and opens the ancient city only — the suburban villas are excluded. The dearer €25 ticket adds the Villa of the Mysteries, the Villa of Diomedes and Villa Regina at Boscoreale. Most guided tours here bundle the Express ticket, so check the grade before you book if there is something outside the walls you want to see.

Not on Pompeii Express. The villa sits outside the city walls and needs the €25 ticket, or an €8 top-up bought by card at the Herculaneum Gate where the Street of the Tombs route begins. Some guided tours include the villas ticket outright, which is the simplest way to do it.

From 16 March to 14 October the park opens at 9:00 and closes at 19:00, with last admission at 17:30. From 15 October to 15 March it closes at 17:00 with last admission at 15:30. Pompeii itself opens every day of the week; it closes only on 25 December and 1 January.

There are three: Porta Marina on Via Villa dei Misteri, Piazza Esedra beside it, and Piazza Anfiteatro at the far end of the site. Almost every guided tour here meets at Porta Marina or Piazza Esedra, both a short walk from the Pompei Villa dei Misteri station. Piazza Anfiteatro suits you if you are arriving on the Naples–Poggiomarino line or want the step-free route.

Yes, and more than most sites. Entry is capped at 20,000 people a day and tickets carry your name and a time slot, so they cannot be bought from a tout or handed on. Book three to five days ahead in summer and a day or two ahead the rest of the year.

Two hours covers the Forum, the main street and a handful of houses, which is what most guided tours here run. Three hours adds the Villa of the Mysteries or the theatres. The park itself publishes routes of two, three, five and seven hours, and its five-hour route is the one that reaches the Amphitheatre.

Named tickets and a daily cap were introduced together to stop bulk buying and resale. Staff can ask for photo ID at the gate to check that the name matches, and if it does not you are refused entry with no refund. Names and dates cannot be changed after purchase, so book with the traveller's own details.

Under-18s enter free, and EU citizens aged 18 to 24 pay a reduced €2. Bring a passport or ID card for anyone claiming either rate, because it is checked at the gate. A tour fare still applies to children even when their admission does not.

Yes — entry is free every first Sunday under the national Domenica al Museo scheme. The catch is that free tickets cannot be reserved ahead, so on a 20,000-cap site your entry is not guaranteed and the queue starts early. Arriving at opening, or booking a tour that handles admission on another day, is the calmer plan.

Pompeii labels almost nothing. Streets and houses carry small signs and little else, so without a guide, an audio guide or a good book you are walking through empty rooms. A two-hour guided walk with the ticket bundled costs little more than the ticket alone, which is why it is the format most people book.

Closed-toe shoes with a grip, because the streets are basalt slabs with cart ruts and raised stepping stones. In summer add a hat, sunscreen and more water than you think, since shade is scarce across 66 hectares. Bags larger than 30 × 30 × 15 cm go to left luggage, so travel light.

Partly, and the park is honest about it. Its Pompeii for All route runs over 3.5 km from Piazza Anfiteatro to the Sanctuary of Venus, and it also works for buggies — but some ramps exceed 8%, there are sudden drops under 5 cm, and long stretches are ancient uneven paving. Most guided tours here are listed as unsuitable for wheelchair users; the private guide on Piazza Esedra is the exception.

Yes, and guided tours here do exactly that. Herculaneum is twenty minutes up the Circumvesuviana line, much smaller, and preserved to first-floor height with wooden fittings still in place. Allow five and a half hours as a minimum, and expect a separate admission of €16 if you are going independently.

Every tour listed here refunds in full if you cancel at least 24 hours before it starts. That covers the tour fare, not a park ticket bought separately — named tickets bought direct are non-refundable except when the park closes. Booking the tour and the ticket together is the flexible option.

Yes. The park sells online through its own official seller and at self-service kiosks on site. A ticket alone is the right choice if you have read up beforehand or are bringing an audio guide from an approved concessionaire.

From 16 March to 14 October admissions split in two: 9:00 to 13:00 takes up to 15,000 people, and 13:00 to 17:30 takes only 5,000. The afternoon slot is a third the size of the morning one, so it sells out first in July and August even though the site is quieter then.

No. Every ticket grade is valid for one entry, and stepping outside the gate ends it. One operator warns its own travellers about this in writing, because people leave for lunch and are asked to pay again.

There is a cafeteria near the Forum and that is essentially it for 66 hectares. Eating is allowed only in designated places, and no tour here includes food unless its listing says so. Carry water and something small, and plan a proper meal for after you leave.

Yes, near each of the three entrances and at a handful of points inside, including by the Forum and the Amphitheatre. There are also three baby-changing facilities inside the ancient city, with keys collected on site.

For the main gate, Pompei Villa dei Misteri on the Circumvesuviana Naples–Sorrento line. Pompei Santuario, on the Naples–Poggiomarino line, and Pompei on the Trenitalia Naples–Salerno line both serve the modern town and the Piazza Anfiteatro entrance instead. Getting off at the wrong one is the most common mistake made here.

Take the Circumvesuviana from Napoli Porta Nolana or Garibaldi towards Sorrento and get off at Pompei Villa dei Misteri, about 35 minutes. Trains run roughly every half hour. The station sits a two-minute walk from Porta Marina, which is where the naples italy pompeii tours listed here meet.

By train it is about two hours to Naples on a high-speed service, then 35 minutes on the Circumvesuviana. A pompeii tour from rome italy runs as a coach or minivan day trip instead, leaving central Rome early and returning in the evening, with the guide and the ticket already handled.

Yes. Leave the A3 Naples–Salerno motorway at the Pompei Scavi exit and use one of the private car parks around Porta Marina and Piazza Anfiteatro. They are privately run rather than part of the park, so prices vary and none is included in any tour fare here.

A two-hour tour covers roughly two kilometres on uneven basalt with kerbs and steps. The park's five-hour route is closer to five kilometres. Reviewers of these tours mention the surface more than any other single thing, so decent shoes matter more here than fitness does.

The listings that state a cap put it at twenty travellers per guide, and one puts it at fourteen. The park's own rules refuse organised groups over 35 and require whisper headsets above 15. Some travellers describe groups running larger than advertised, so if size matters to you the private options are the safer buy.

Across the tours here, guiding is sold in English, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese and Chinese. English is on every listing; the private three-hour archaeologist tour carries the widest spread. Book the language option explicitly rather than assuming it at the gate.

Most do once the group passes a threshold — ten people on one listing, sixteen on another, and everyone on the Herculaneum days. They matter on the open streets, where a guide five metres ahead is inaudible. Only the park's own approved concessionaires may supply audio guides inside the site.

Freely, for personal use. Professional cameras, microphones and audio mixers need written authorisation from the park, as do drones. Tripods are tolerated in open areas but not inside the houses.

Only a small one: up to 10 kg and 40 cm at the shoulder, on a lead, carried inside buildings, and you clean up after it. Guide dogs assisting visitors with disabilities are admitted without those limits.

April to early June and late September to October give you warm weather, long opening hours and bearable crowds. July and August are hot on open ground with no shade. Winter is quiet and cheap but the gate shuts at 17:00 with last admission at 15:30.

The site stays open and every tour here runs rain or shine; operators say so in their own booking notes. Bring a light waterproof rather than an umbrella, which the regulations do not permit everywhere. Heavy weather can close individual houses, and it can close the Vesuvius crater path entirely.

Yes — several tours here pair the two, and the crater path takes about ninety minutes up and down. One operator states plainly that its guide may not enter the Vesuvius national park, so you are not guided to the crater on that trip; the park's own alpine guides are not guaranteed either. Treat the volcano half as a walk you do yourself.

The casts are plaster, poured into the voids that bodies left in the hardened ash, using a technique devised by Giuseppe Fiorelli in the 1860s. Skeletal remains are inside many of them. They are displayed in several places on site, including near the Forum granary and the Garden of the Fugitives.

About 49 of the site's 66 hectares. The rest is deliberately left buried: digging creates conservation work that has to be funded forever, and the current programme focuses on stabilising what is already exposed while working a limited new area in Regio IX.

In AD 79, but the day is genuinely disputed. Pliny the Younger's letters give 24 August, and the park's own guide follows him. In 2018 the park announced a charcoal inscription from Regio V dated to the sixteenth day before the Calends of November, which points to 17 October, and it treats the question as open.

It is not obligatory in Italy and several listings say so themselves. Most put gratuities in their excludes, which is a note about the fare rather than an expectation. If a guide has made the two hours, a few euros is normal and welcome.