Pompeii
A Roman town of twenty thousand, stopped dead one October afternoon in 79.
Duration
3 hrs 30 min – 6 hrs
Difficulty
●●○○○
Best time
At opening
Open
Every day
Entry price
To confirm
Vesuvius buried Pompeii under six metres of ash and pumice in 79. The town did not burn: it was sealed, and with it the streets, the shops, the election graffiti on the walls, the bread in the ovens and the cart ruts in the paving.
Sixty-six hectares, about two thirds of it cleared. The bodies left cavities in the hardened ash: a nineteenth-century archaeologist thought of pouring plaster into them, and that is where the casts come from. Excavation continues, and Regio V has yielded intact frescoes since 2018, along with an inscription that moved the eruption's date from August to October.
Getting there
Circumvesuviana train from Naples, thirty-five minutes, Pompei Scavi stop — not the Pompei stop, which serves the modern town.
What the price covers
paid entry, rate to be checked; a combined ticket with Herculaneum and Oplontis over three days exists
Rules on site
The site is vast, paved with uneven basalt and shadeless: three to four hours of walking, and closed shoes are effectively necessary. There are almost no water points beyond the forum.
