Pompeii

In May 2025, archaeologists opened a bedroom door in the House of Helle and Phrixus and found a family who had barricaded themselves in with a bed frame. Four of them: adults, and at least one child. They had pushed the bed against the door to hold back the incoming lapilli, the small rock fragments raining from Vesuvius. The volcanic debris came in anyway. “They didn’t make it,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. “Excavating and visiting Pompeii means coming face to face with the beauty of art but also with the precariousness of our lives.”

That quote is the reason to visit. Not the photo opportunity, not the ancient fast-food bars (though those are genuinely fascinating), not the ticking box of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The reason is that Pompeii keeps delivering new moments of intimacy with people who died in an afternoon. That is what no other place on earth quite manages.

What Actually Happened (and When)

Most visitors arrive knowing the broad outline: Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, buried the city, Pliny the Younger wrote about it in two letters to Tacitus, end of story. Several of those things are more complicated than they sound.

The eruption date itself is contested. For centuries, scholars accepted August 24 from Pliny’s letters. Then in 2018, excavators in the Regio V area found a charcoal inscription on a wall reading “XVI K NOV,” which translates as October 17. Since charcoal fades fast, the argument went, this must have been written just days before the eruption, putting the date firmly in autumn rather than late summer. Autumn would explain other physical evidence: pomegranates and chestnuts found in the ruins (late-season fruits), braziers in use for heat, and the heavy woolen cloaks on some victims. The counter-argument, which Zuchtriegel’s own team later published, is that charcoal inscriptions can remain legible for up to ten months, so the October 17 note could have been scrawled the previous autumn. The debate remains genuinely open, which is not what the tour guides tell you.

What is also not widely explained is why you see plaster casts of human figures but not at Herculaneum. When the ash cooled and hardened around Pompeii’s dead, it formed a shell. The organic material inside decayed over centuries, leaving a hollow negative in the rock. In 1863, archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli began pouring liquid plaster into those cavities. The casts that emerged are devastating: a dog still chained to its post, a man covering his face, a pregnant woman lying on her side. At Herculaneum, the mechanism was different. The town was hit by a pyroclastic surge reaching around 500 degrees Celsius, hot enough to vaporize flesh almost instantly. That left actual skeletons rather than voids. In the 1980s, excavators found more than 300 skeletons in the ancient boathouses near the old shoreline, people who had run for the sea and been caught. The bones are visible at Herculaneum in a way that remains haunting to this day.

The Site: What to Actually See

The park covers roughly 66 hectares. You can walk the whole thing in a long morning if you move fast and skip everything, or spend a full day and still leave things unseen. A realistic middle ground: three to four hours, targeted.

The House of the Vettii is the first place you should book. Closed for over twenty years of restoration, it reopened in January 2023, and it remains the most astonishing single property in Pompeii. The Vettii were two freed enslaved men, Aulus Vettius Restitutus and Aulus Vettius Conviva, who became merchants wealthy enough to fill their home with extraordinary frescoes. At the entrance, Priapus stands weighing his oversized phallus on a scale against a bag of coins. It is not placed there for shock value. In Roman belief, an image of Priapus at the threshold warded off thieves and the evil eye, and the scales were a statement: our prosperity is real, our household is protected. Further inside, twelve mythological panels survive in near-perfect condition, along with a famous frieze showing Cupids engaged in various trades: harvesting flowers, selling at market, making perfume. The peristyle courtyard with its eighteen columns and restored water features gives you a concrete sense of how wealthy Romans actually lived, not in cold marble halls, but in sun-dappled gardens arranged for conversation and display. Access is limited to pre-booked groups of fifteen, Monday through Friday. Book online before you leave home.

The Regio IX excavation area is the other essential target, but it works differently. Since 2022, this 3,200-square-metre zone at the centre of the ancient city has been actively dug, and on weekdays you can join a pre-booked group to walk through with site staff. What you see will depend on when you visit, because the finds keep changing. In early 2023 alone, the diggers uncovered a laundry with stone tubs, a private thermal complex capable of entertaining thirty guests (with separate hot, warm, and cold rooms), a room with charcoal sketches on unplastered walls that appear to have been made by children, and a megalography frieze nearly three walls long depicting the procession of Dionysus: bacchantes, satyrs playing double flutes, a wine sacrifice. This frieze rivals the Villa of the Mysteries in ambition and was buried under two thousand years of earth until two years ago.

In 2024, archaeologists in Regio IX also opened what they call the “prison bakery.” The name comes from what they found: a flour mill in an enclosed yard, with iron-barred windows and worn circular grooves cut into the volcanic basalt paving around the millstones. Donkeys, likely blindfolded to keep them moving in circles, wore those grooves. Evidence suggests enslaved people worked alongside the animals in what the park director described as “the most shocking side of ancient slavery.” The bakery opened to the public in January 2024 and is now accessible as part of the standard route.

The Lupanar (the main commercial brothel, on the corner of Vicolo del Lupanare) draws crowds and deserves a look, though not for the obvious reason. Yes, the painted panels above each doorway show various configurations intended as a kind of menu. But more interesting are the graffiti. Pompeii contains over 11,000 graffiti inscriptions, the single largest collection of ancient writing from any site. They cover the full social range: electoral endorsements scratched onto exterior walls, gladiator fan records (Celadus the Thracian gladiator “makes the girls sigh”), business disputes, and a meta-commentary above the basilica entrance that reads: “I am amazed, O wall, that you have not collapsed at having to carry the tedious scribblings of so many writers.” Someone scratched that in Latin two thousand years ago. It is essentially the world’s first tweet about comment sections.

One spot most visitors walk past entirely: Thermopolium of Regio V, excavated between 2019 and 2021. It is an ancient street food counter, the Roman equivalent of a takeaway, with large ceramic jars set into the stone counter (called dolia) that once held hot food. Organic residues inside the dolia revealed the menu: duck, pork, fish, snails, beef, and fava beans, along with traces of wine. The counter is painted with vivid frescoes, including a depiction of a Nereid and a dog. It is small and easy to miss, but it shows the street-level economy of the city with more clarity than most temples do.

Herculaneum: The Honest Case for Going Instead

I will say it plainly: if you have one day and one site to choose, go to Herculaneum.

Pompeii is extraordinary and worth your time. But Herculaneum is smaller (you can cover it thoroughly in two to three hours), less crowded by a significant margin, and better preserved in ways that matter. Because the volcanic mud that buried Herculaneum was denser than Pompeii’s ash, it sealed organic materials that the ash could not. Wooden doors, furniture, cloth, food. Herculaneum’s carbonised library, the Villa dei Papiri, contained over 1,800 papyrus scrolls that are still being decoded using X-ray tomography, and recent years have seen the first legible passages recovered. You can see actual wooden beams, painted shop signs, and mosaics that retain colour depths Pompeii’s frescoes have largely lost to centuries of exposure.

The Circumvesuviana train from Naples serves both sites (see below for logistics). Ercolano Scavi is one stop before Pompei Scavi if you are heading away from Naples. The ticket price for Herculaneum is lower (around 13 euros for adults in 2025). If you have two days, do both: Herculaneum in the morning of day one, Pompeii on day two. If you only have one, Herculaneum rewards attention more per square metre.

That said, Pompeii is the one with the new finds. The prison bakery, the House of Helle and Phrixus family in their barricaded bedroom, the Regio IX megalography: none of that is at Herculaneum. If recent archaeology and raw scale matter to you, Pompeii wins.

Getting There

The Circumvesuviana is the right way to arrive. It runs from Naples Porta Nolana (not Naples Centrale, which is a short walk away) to Pompei Scavi - Villa dei Misteri. The journey takes 35 to 40 minutes and costs around 2.80 euros each way. Trains run roughly every 30 minutes. Get off at Pompei Scavi, not at Pompei town, which is a different and farther stop. The entrance to the Porta Marina Superiore is directly across the road from the station.

The Circumvesuviana is safe but crowded, and the Naples-Sorrento line carries a lot of tourists between June and September. Keep your bag in front of you and your phone in a pocket, not on the seat beside you. Organised theft by groups working the train does happen, and your belongings on the luggage rack above you are not your belongings for long on a crowded carriage.

Driving is possible: Pompeii is about 23 kilometres from Naples city centre, the A3 motorway goes past, and there is a large car park near the Porta Marina entrance. In peak summer, traffic on the approach roads can be severe and parking fills by 9:30am. The train is faster and cheaper unless you have family with small children or heavy luggage.

A word about the official app: the Pompeii Sites app provides an offline map and basic site information. Download it before you travel. The site map sold at the entrance is adequate but the app version shows you current closures, which change frequently as active excavation shifts access routes.

Tickets and Timing

From 2025, all Pompeii tickets are nominative. You enter your name (and those of your party) at booking, and bring matching ID at entry. This applies whether you book via the official Vivaticket platform or a third-party like GetYourGuide. Buy online: the gate price is the same, but the queue to buy on the day can run 45 minutes in peak season.

The standard adult ticket (Pompeii Express) is 20 euros. The Pompeii Plus ticket at 36 euros adds access to the Villa of the Mysteries, the Villa of Diomedes, and the Villa Regina in Boscoreale. Unless you are coming back a second day, the Plus pass is worth it only if you plan to spend five or more hours on site.

The first Sunday of every month is free entry for all visitors. On those days, expect a crowd that makes even a normal summer weekend look quiet. Plan around it rather than for it.

Timed entry slots operate from mid-March through mid-October. The morning band runs 9am to 1pm (up to 15,000 admissions); the afternoon band runs 1pm to 5:30pm (up to 5,000). Practically speaking, the first band fills weeks in advance in July and August. Book as early as possible. Last entry is 5:30pm in summer (closing at 7:30pm), 3:30pm in winter (closing at 5pm).

The best time of day to arrive is at opening, 9am. Tour groups from Naples and Sorrento typically arrive between 10am and 11am. The ninety-minute window before them is the closest you will get to the site feeling calm.

The Food Situation

The cafes and restaurants at or immediately beside the entrance gates are, as a rule, overpriced and mediocre. The captive-audience economics are straightforward. A cornetto and a coffee inside the park will cost you twice what it would in a bar in town. Buy breakfast before you arrive.

For a proper meal, walk ten to fifteen minutes from the Porta Marina entrance toward the modern town centre and your options improve immediately. Ristorante President on Via Roma has a Michelin star and represents a local family’s decades of work in Campanian cuisine. It is the splurge option, and it earns it. For a middle-ground lunch, Caupona on Via dell’Abbondanza offers dishes inspired by ancient Roman culinary texts alongside more conventional pasta. The fresco-painted walls are deliberate theatre, but the food is genuine.

One specific recommendation: if you are heading back through Naples, skip the tourist-adjacent pizzerias around Piazza del Plebiscito and walk instead to the Quartieri Spagnoli neighbourhood, roughly ten minutes west of the main tourist zone. Pizzeria Gino Sorbillo on Via dei Tribunali is the most famous address for Neapolitan pizza in the city, and the queue moves quickly because the wood-fired turnaround is fast. Margherita with buffalo mozzarella, eaten standing or on a low stool, is the benchmark against which every other pizza you eat will be judged.

Inside the park itself, there are water fountains scattered around the site. They work. Bring a refillable bottle and use them. In July and August, the volcanic basalt paving radiates heat that the open sky makes worse, and shade is limited outside the roofed structures. Start at 9am, break at midday in a covered area or leave the site entirely for lunch, and return after 3pm when the day-tripper buses have departed.

Where to Stay

The modern town of Pompeii (the one with the Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary, not to be confused with the ancient ruins) has several mid-range hotels within ten minutes’ walk of the entrance. Hotel Forum on Via Roma is functional, reasonably priced, and leaves nothing to worry about logistically: you are at the gate in twelve minutes and back for a shower whenever you need it.

For a better base that also unlocks Naples and the Amalfi coast, staying in Naples itself makes geographical sense. The Chiaia neighbourhood, south of Piazza dei Martiri, has hotels at various price points and is about an hour from Pompeii by Circumvesuviana. The Spanish Quarters area, rougher but genuine, has seen a wave of boutique hotels open in renovated palazzi over the past five years, and prices remain lower than comparable rooms in Rome or Florence.

Sorrento is the classic Pompeii-adjacent base for good reason: it is on the Circumvesuviana line (Pompeii is 35 minutes away), has ferry connections to Capri and Amalfi, and sits on the cliff above the sea in a way that makes the journey worthwhile. Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria on Piazza Tasso is the heritage option, with rooms looking directly over the Gulf of Naples. For something smaller, the town centre has a range of family-run pensioni that rarely appear on the big booking platforms; asking around in person or calling ahead generally works better than the algorithm for these.

One note about Sorrento hotels: rack rates in July and August are steep. Booking three to four months ahead is not excessive. Visiting in late September or October keeps the weather excellent and brings prices back to reasonable.

A Few Things No Tour Highlights

Most guided tours and every “top ten” article will send you to the Forum, the Amphitheatre, the Baths of the Forum, and the Temple of Apollo. All of these are genuinely good. But here are three things the crowds tend to pass:

The Casa del Poeta Tragico. This modest house contains one of the most reproduced images from Pompeii: the CAVE CANEM mosaic (Beware the Dog) in the entrance vestibule, showing a chained dog in a posture that looks remarkably like every irritable guard dog you have ever met. Most visitors photograph it and move on. But the house also has some of the best small-scale mythological frescoes on the site, including a scene from the Iliad and a depiction of Achilles and Briseis that is painted with real compositional intelligence.

The ancient wheel ruts in the paving stones. Via dell’Abbondanza, the main east-west street, has deep parallel grooves worn into the basalt by centuries of cart wheels. Stand at street level and you are looking at the physical record of commercial traffic: delivery carts, amphorae of olive oil, grain wagons making the same turns day after day for decades. Stepping-stones cross the road at intervals, positioned so pedestrians could cross without wading through the street drainage. The channel between them was the perfect width for cart wheels to pass. Roman urban planning was an engineering conversation.

The painted electoral notices (programmata) on exterior walls. Pompeii’s external walls are covered in campaign endorsements painted in red and black lettering, and the Archaeological Park has been systematically documenting them using multispectral imaging that reveals faded text invisible to the naked eye. What they show is that Pompeian elections were energetically contested: endorsements from professional guilds (the muleteers back Gaius Cuspius Pansa, the bakers prefer Marcus Holconius Rufus), from named women (who could not vote but could endorse), from neighbours, rivals, and an anonymous scrawl on one wall that translates roughly as “even the thieves back this candidate.” The political texture of the city is right there on the walls, and almost no one stops to read it.

The Eruption, Revisited

The sequence of events on the day itself is worth understanding before you arrive, because it reframes everything you see. Vesuvius began erupting in the late morning. The first phase produced a column of ash and pumice rising up to 30 kilometres into the sky. For several hours, it rained pumice on Pompeii (lighter and drier material, less immediately lethal). Many residents fled in this period and survived. Those who stayed, for whatever reason (infirmity, denial, the task of protecting property, simply waiting to see if it stopped), were still alive when the column collapsed overnight.

The column’s collapse sent pyroclastic surges moving down the volcano’s flanks at high speed. Pompeii was hit by multiple surges. The third or fourth was lethal. Most of the victims whose remains survive were killed not by suffocation under falling ash, as is often stated, but by the thermal shock of superheated gas arriving faster than they could move. The bed-frame family in the House of Helle and Phrixus, the couple found in the Villa of Diomedes, the dog at the chain: they were killed in seconds, and the ash preserved the shape of what they left behind.

People came back afterward. Excavations in Pompeii’s southern quarter, published in recent years, found evidence of occupation continuing in parts of the ruined city into the fifth century CE. Someone built a bread oven out of a repurposed Roman cistern, using tiles and stones scavenged from the ruins, and that oven remained in use for centuries after Vesuvius stopped erupting. The city was buried but not entirely abandoned. That complicates the cleaner narrative.

A Note Before You Go

The practical last thing: book your House of the Vettii slot and your Regio IX access before you leave home. These are the two experiences that distinguish a visit in 2026 from any visit you could have made five years ago, and both require advance booking through the official site at pompeiisites.org. Do not leave this until arrival; the slots fill. Everything else at Pompeii can be done spontaneously, but these two cannot.