Pompeii Guide: Tickets, Hours, and How Long You Need

Pompeii tickets start at €20, and the site opens daily at 9am year-round — straightforward numbers, but they don't answer the two questions that actually shape a good visit: which ticket type you need, and how many hours to realistically budget for a site that covers over 60 hectares of excavated ruins.

This guide covers both, plus opening hours, how to get there from Naples, and whether Pompeii or its smaller neighbor Herculaneum is the better use of your time.

What ticket should you book?

Pompeii Express, at €20 for adults, covers the core excavated site — the Forum, the amphitheatre, the main residential blocks, and the plaster casts that are Pompeii's most recognizable feature. Pompeii Plus, at €25, adds the suburban villas route outside the main walls, including the Villa of the Mysteries with its well-preserved frescoes.

Ticket type	Price (adult)	What's included
Pompeii Express	€20	Core excavated site: Forum, amphitheatre, main residential blocks
Pompeii Plus	€25	Everything in Express, plus the suburban villas route (Villa of the Mysteries, Villa of Diomedes, Villa Regina)
Multi-Site Pass (3 days)	€30	Pompeii Plus plus Oplontis, Stabiae, and Boscoreale

Children under 18 enter free with ID, and the site caps entries at 20,000 visitors a day — one of several costs worth planning around in your daily Italy budget. Book directly through the official Pompeii Archaeological Park site rather than a third-party reseller — it's the same ticket at a lower markup, and it lets you select a specific entry time rather than relying on walk-up availability.

How long do you need at Pompeii?

Three to four hours covers the highlights comfortably for a first visit: the Forum, the amphitheatre, a handful of well-preserved houses, and the plaster casts. If you want to see everything — the Villa of the Mysteries, the full bath complexes, and a slower pace through the residential quarters — budget four to six hours.

On a tighter schedule, prioritize the Forum, the amphitheatre, and one or two of the better-preserved houses (the Casa del Fauno and the House of the Vettii are consistently worth the detour) over trying to cover the entire site. Pompeii rewards depth over completeness; walking past everything without stopping defeats the point.

Pompeii opening hours and best time to go

The site opens at 9am year-round. In peak season (April-October) it closes at 7pm with last entry at 5:30pm; from November through March it closes at 5pm with last entry at 3:30pm. Arrive at or near opening if you can — Pompeii has almost no shade across most of the excavated area, and a midday visit in summer means walking exposed stone streets in direct heat for hours. Late afternoon, closer to the last-entry cutoff, is the other good window, when both the heat and the crowds have thinned.

How do you get to Pompeii from Naples?

The Circumvesuviana train from Napoli Garibaldi to Pompei Scavi takes about 35 minutes and is the simplest way in — no transfers, and trains run frequently enough that you don't need to plan around a fixed departure. Pompei Scavi station sits a short walk from the site's main entrance. For the full logistics of using Naples as your base for this and other Campania day trips, see our Naples travel guide.

Pompeii vs. Herculaneum

Pompeii is bigger, more famous, and gives you the plaster casts and the amphitheatre that don't exist at Herculaneum. Herculaneum, a smaller site closer to Naples, was buried under volcanic material that preserved wood, textiles, and even food in a way Pompeii's ash didn't, and it draws a fraction of the crowds. If you only have time for one, Pompeii is the more complete first-timer experience; if you're doing both regions or want a quieter, more intimate site, add Herculaneum as a half-day extension.

Do you need a guide?

Not required, but worth considering — on-site signage is minimal relative to the scale of the ruins, and a guide (or a well-reviewed audio guide) fills in context that's easy to miss walking through on your own. For more visual and object-level context than the ruins themselves provide, pair a Pompeii visit with Naples' National Archaeological Museum, which holds many of the best mosaics and frescoes actually excavated from the site — seeing the objects after walking the empty rooms they came from adds a dimension neither visit gives you alone.

If you're building out a full Campania trip, Pompeii pairs naturally with a stop on the Amalfi Coast or a Capri day trip on either side of it.

Frequently asked questions