Archaeological Park of Pompeii
UNESCO World Heritage Site (Archaeological Areas Of Pompei, Herculaneum And Torre Annunziata, 1997); Parco Archeologico Autonomo Del Ministero Della Cultura · Pompei, Campania
The Roman town buried under four to six metres of ash and pumice when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, then dug out from 1748 onward to give the only complete picture anywhere of how an ordinary Roman city worked: paved streets with stepping stones and cart ruts, fast-food counters with their jars still in place, bakeries with mills, election graffiti, brothels, baths, theatres and an amphitheatre older than the Colosseum. About two-thirds of the 66 hectares are excavated, and new digs in Regio IX keep producing frescoes and skeletons. The plaster casts of victims, made by pouring plaster into the voids their bodies left, are in the Garden of the Fugitives and a permanent exhibition opened in 2026. With four million visitors a year the park now caps entry at 20,000 a day on named tickets, and the houses open on a rotation posted at the gates each morning. It is enormous, nearly shadeless and paved with basalt, so it rewards an early start, a route and real shoes far more than it rewards a two-hour dash from a cruise ship.
Via Villa dei Misteri 2, Pompei, Campania, 80045, Italy
16 March to 14 October 9:00-19:00, last entry 17:30; 15 October to 15 March 9:00-17:00, last entry 15:30. Individual houses close earlier, around 18:20 in summer. Closed 25 December and 1 January only. Evening openings Friday and Saturday from late August to early October on a separate ticket.
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