All Set for Pompeii
(vero;2025-Feb-25)
You can also check our photo gallery dedicated to the Ruins of Pompeii.
The main reason for our trip to Naples in Summer 2024 was to fulfil one of my (Vero's) dreams: see the ruins of Pompeii. Such a long awaited visit called for extensive preparation which means I spent a lot of time at home pouring over books, blogs and websites to plan ahead. It was all worthwhile since the extent and layout of the ruins can be quite daunting and overwhelming: we arrived at the site with an itinerary well prepared and designed to tick what I wanted to see. Following is some info to help you plan your visit and "tame" Pompeii:
A trip to our local library revealed the book "Pompeii: the Life of a Roman Town" by Mary Beard. The author is bringing the ruins back to life by depicting daily life in Pompeii; she picks some artefacts or singularities which can be seen on the ground and puts them into context, explaining their purpose. I enjoyed reading the book although I must confess that I did not finish it: it felt too repetitive at the end, dwelling into too many details which seemed redundant to what she had written in previous chapters.
A visit to the Pompeii Official Website can do no harm. Here you can download a map of the ruins showing the different areas of the site and best of all a companion guide with a short description of each villa by area. Be aware though that not all buildings are open for visitors: this page provides a list of the open ones. Furthermore, seven houses are open only one day a week: you'll find their name and their day of opening at the very end of the open houses page.
And then I discovered the website of Planet Pompeii. It was an eye-opener and unlocked Pompeii for me. The site offers an interactive map showing all the points of interest (POIs i.e. buildings) and a list of suggested paths. The user interface is very intuitive and easy to navigate; for example, a click on a POI on the map opens a small window with a thumbnail picture of the POI, its name and map reference. A click on the thumbnail brings the user to an exhaustive description of the building.
But there is more to it: once registered and with my own account I was able to construct my own itinerary and put everything I wanted to see on MY map. First, I made a list of the buildings I wanted to see and marked them as favourites, then I clicked to create a path, added my favourites to it and the website produced immediately the most effective path to follow to see them all. It was nearly perfect, only two buildings were out of sequence, something easy to correct once on the ground.
The map with path can be printed as a pdf file; there is a box to be ticked for adding the POI descriptions to the file but it did not work when I tried. I got an error message in Italian telling me that it did not fit in one page. This was unfortunate, but no problem: I went back to my list of favourites and copied and pasted the descriptions of each one in a separate text document, printed it and I was all set to go.
If visiting from Naples by train, we definitely recommend boarding at the Porta Nolana station to guarantee a seat (as advised in many blogs) and buy a return ticket straight away to avoid queuing at the ticket machines at Pompei Scavi Villa dei Misteri Station for the trip back (6.60€ return as per October 2024). We used the Circumvesuviana train line a few times (to Pompeii, Herculaneum and Sorrento), this website has a schedule and a list of stops, but we never left at the time we thought we would and the trip took always longer (sometimes significant longer) as the advertised 30 minutes; on the other side, we never had to wait long for a train to depart.
To make the most of our week-long stay in Naples, we had purchased an ArteCard 365-Lite (26€ as per October 2024), valid for one year, which offers one single entry to 34 sites in Campania, including among others Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Archaeological Museum. Transport is not included. The card can be bought online, with an app, or physically at some shops in town. Be aware though that it cannot be bought at the Tourism Office on Piazza del Gesù Nuovo anymore; we bought ours at the box office located in the Galleria Umberto I (a sheet of paper with a QR code). Check this page for other versions of the ArteCard. A good feature of the pass is that it allows to skip the queues, there was a separate counter at Pompeii for ArteCard visitors.
There were many people, many groups, some of them huge, but this did not impact the visit very much (except in some baths or in the lupanar): the place is so huge that it is very easy to escape the crowds.
While I enjoyed the day thoroughly, Thomas left a bit disappointed: he had expected more of painted villas on the ground. A visit to Naples' Archaeological Museum (a MUST) a day later put this right: that's where the best mosaics and murals are kept for preservation.
Don't forget to check our photo gallery dedicated to the Ruins of Pompeii.
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$ updated from: Blog.htxt Fri 28 Feb 2025 14:45:59 trvl2 — Copyright © 2025 Vero and Thomas Lauer unless otherwise stated | All rights reserved $