Pompeii

Pompeii tickets: the Express, the villas and the guided tour

Every Pompeii ticket carries the visitor’s name and a date, and the park lets in up to 20,000 people a day. At the gate the name has to match your ID, and neither the name nor the date can be changed after you book, so type them exactly as they appear on your passport.

The ticket we sell is the Express, for the ancient city inside the walls, and you choose the day and an entry window as you book. The Express costs €27.50, and it’s the only one of our Pompeii tickets you can cancel, up to 24 hours before. It lets you in once, so when you walk out, the visit is over.

Under-18s go in free, and on the ticket we sell they have their own option at checkout, as do EU citizens aged 18 to 24.

The villas take a little planning. The Villa of the Mysteries and the Villa of Diomedes stand on the road of tombs beyond Porta Ercolano, and there’s no way in from the road outside: you reach them from inside the site, on a route of their own. With the Express you pay the €8 at Porta Ercolano and walk on. Is it worth it? Lonely Planet calls the Villa of the Mysteries’ paintings the most important fresco left in place at Pompeii.

If you’d like someone to explain what you’re looking at, the guided tour with an archaeologist, from €49.50, includes fast-track entry and a headset, and one of its options adds the Villa of the Mysteries. If you’d rather not tie yourself to an entry window, the Flexible ticket, at €27, is sold with a flexible entry time. Neither the tour nor the Flexible ticket can be cancelled.

Pompeii with the Campania Artecard: the city included, the villas extra

Of the Naples Pass and Naples city passes we sell, the Campania Artecard is the one to look at if Pompeii is one of several sites on your trip. Its 365 Lite version gives you one entry a year at each of the region’s state sites, counting from the day you first use it, and Herculaneum, the Archaeological Museum in Naples and the Royal Palace of Caserta are on the list with Pompeii. At Pompeii it covers the same ancient city as the Express.

The sums are quick. On our tickets, Pompeii costs €27.50 and Herculaneum €19.50, while the 365 Lite costs €31 and covers both, plus the museum, Caserta and the rest of its sites. Under-18s go in free at all of them, so you only need cards for the adults.

The card spares you the entry window, too. You go in through the Piazza Esedra entrance and collect your named ticket at the ticket office there, with your ID. On the free first Sunday of the month, the cards don’t get you in ahead of anyone.

Both cards stop at the city walls, so the villa supplement applies with either.

Getting to Pompeii from Naples on the Circumvesuviana

The train drops you almost at the gate. The Circumvesuviana is the local railway that runs round the bay from Naples to Sorrento, and its stop for the ruins, Pompei Scavi-Villa dei Misteri, is about 50 metres from the Porta Marina entrance.

Trenitalia’s Naples to Salerno line also stops at a station called Pompei, which only suits you if you’re starting at the Piazza Anfiteatro end, and SITA buses run from Naples and Salerno. The Campania Express, the tourist train that older guides send you on, has been suspended since 1 October 2026.

If you’d rather skip public transport, a return shuttle from Naples costs €20, transport only, with two departures a day in winter. By car, leave the A3 motorway at Pompei Scavi; the park has no car park of its own, but there’s paid municipal parking around it.

Herculaneum is on the same line, 21 minutes nearer Naples, so a long winter day can take in both, Herculaneum first, though Pompeii then gets the half-day version.

Pompeii opening hours and how long a visit takes

Pompeii opens every day of the year but two, and it’s on winter hours until mid-March.

The park says two to three hours at the least, and a whole day still won’t show you everything. Three to four hours covers the essentials, and five to six adds the theatres and the villas. For a full day in winter, be through the gate by 11:00.

There’s a self-service restaurant with a view at the Casina dell’Aquila, a café and wine bar, drinking fountains around the site, and toilets by the three entrances and at a few points inside. For visitors in wheelchairs, the Pompeii for All route starts at Piazza Anfiteatro and runs for more than 3.5 kilometres on ancient paving, with ramps that can be steeper than 8 per cent.

What to see in Pompeii in half a day

A half day of three to four hours works best as a walk from Porta Marina, by the station, to Piazza Anfiteatro at the other end. You start at the Forum, the town’s main square, with the Sanctuary of Apollo, the Basilica, the Temple of Jupiter and the Forum Baths around it.

From the Forum, the Lupanar, the town’s brothel, and the Stabian Baths come next, along with the bakery of Popidius Priscus and a thermopolium, one of Pompeii’s street-food bars. Then it’s on to the big houses: the House of the Faun, which fills a whole block, and the House of the Vettii, with its painted rooms and the figure of Priapus, a fertility god, at the door.

Which houses are open changes from time to time. Since 15 August 2026 the House of Menander, the House of the Tragic Poet with its “cave canem” dog mosaic, the House of Octavius Quartio, the House of Pansa and the Fullery of Stephanus have been open every day. The House of the Ceii, the Lararium of Achilles, the House of the Silver Wedding and the Praedia of Julia Felix are closed.

The walk ends at the amphitheatre, which dates from 80 BC and is the oldest permanent amphitheatre surviving in Italy. Beside it, the Large Palaestra, the town’s great exercise ground, has a permanent display of plaster casts and organic finds, and the Piazza Anfiteatro exit is right there.

A whole day in Pompeii: the theatres and the Villa of the Mysteries

With five or six hours, add the Large Theatre and the Quadriporticus beside the theatres, which served as the gladiators’ barracks, then the Garden of the Fugitives, where casts of victims lie where they were found. The Antiquarium, near Piazza Esedra, holds finds from the site.

Then, if you’ve paid for the villa route, walk out through Porta Ercolano and along the road of tombs to the Villa of the Mysteries. It grew out of a modest house of the 3rd century BC, and it takes its name from the paintings in its dining room, which show the initiation rites of the cult of Dionysus, the god of wine. The Villa of Diomedes is on the same route, and in winter the last access from Porta Ercolano is at 15:30, so head there in the early afternoon.

Pompeii under the ash of AD 79

Vesuvius buried Pompeii in AD 79, mostly under ash and lapilli, the small stones a volcano throws out. Herculaneum, closer to Naples, went under avalanches of hot gas and rock instead.

The digging began in the middle of the 18th century and still goes on, and more than four million people came to see it in 2024. As you walk the streets, look at the walls: they still carry painted slogans for an election that was coming up when the volcano erupted.