How long you need to visit Pompeii

Two or three hours

That’s what most people do, often without even planning it. In two hours you see the Forum, the Basilica, the Forum Baths, the House of the Faun, and little else—and you leave feeling like you’ve walked a lot but understood very little. If that’s all the time you have, a two-hour guided tour is the best way to spend it: the guide takes you where you need to go and keeps you from wandering down the wrong alleys.

Four hours

This is the right amount of time for the main highlights: from the Forum you reach the Lupanare, the Great Theatre, the House of Menander, and you can even make it to the Amphitheatre and the Great Gymnasium without rushing. You’ll find a sensible route in what to see in Pompeii.

A full day, or two

With a full day, you can add the villas outside the walls—that’s the Pompeii+ area—and take the breaks that are really needed in Pompeii. To see the entire park, though, you’d need at least two full days: no one visiting for a weekend has that kind of time. If you’re considering the extended ticket, read Express or Plus.

And if you want to include Mount Vesuvius or Herculaneum

A combined Pompeii and Vesuvius day takes a good seven hours, with about two hours inside the ruins and an hour and a half at the crater, getting you back around 5:00 PM. Herculaneum, on the other hand, is compact and can be visited in one to two and a half hours, so seeing both sites in a day is doable: I talk about it in Pompeii or Herculaneum.

Frequently asked questions