Ancient City Pompeii Italy - Entrance Fees, Opening times, Pompeii Tours for Cruisers

"Planning your visit to the Ancient City Pompeii gets easier with these practical tips on how to dress, entrance fees, opening times and where to find what!"

If you have followed our directions on getting from Naples to Pompeii by train, you will be entering the Pompeii ruins from Porta Marina, the entrance close to Pompeii Scavi train station.

As you enter the area of the ancient city Pompeii excavation site, you will be able to get your tickets, maps, info booklets, and audio guides here.

The Pompeii entrance fee is €18 per adult (always check the official Pompeii site for the latest info).

Now, just keep in mind Pompeii is about 440,000 square meters in size, so it would take a full three days to see it all. After all, this city was home to about 11,000 people!

There is a lot to see and find out here. And I warmly suggest having some kind of guidance here.

If you think you might save some money and get an audio-guide instead of paying for a tour guide, you might be disappointed: people often spend a lot of time trying to coordinate the audio guide with the map and end-up walking around aimlessly.

Ancient City of Pompeii: Tickets and Entrance Fees

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It gets very busy at Pompeii entrance

Just like Ephesus in Turkey, Pompeii, being one of the most important archaeological sites in Italy, deserves to be seen with a tour guide, especially if you haven't dedicated much time researching the place before your visit.

Getting a two-half hour guided tour that starts from Pompeii entrance is not much more expensive than the entrance itself, check these out for yourself, I have found them on Get Your Guide and they are a steal!

1) From Naples or Pompeii: Guided Tour Pompeii's Historic Sites. This is a new service on offer, at the moment of writing it starts at only € 25. (it has an option of picking you up in Naples, at the train station at Piazza Garibaldi, which is suitable if you are staying in Naples before or after your cruise!).

2) Pompeii: 2.5 - Hour Guided Tour With and Archaelogist, € 27 p.p., has only 5-star reviews!

3) Pompeii: 2 Hour Walking Tour With Professional Guide, € 27 p.p., has only 5-star reviews!

If you would rather get together with your guide in front of the cruise ship, right there at the Stazione Marittima, sit on the bus and not worry about a thing, shore-excursions are the right option for you.

I have hand picked the ones with the best price-review ratio: some of them are private tours (tend to have higher ratings) and some of them are group tours.

Getting Around the Ancient City Pompeii

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When you visit the ancient city Pompeii keep in mind the old Roman cobblestone roads can be very exhausting to walk on. So do wear solid, flat and closed footwear.

If you are disabled, this will not be the site to use a scooter or a manual wheelchair, the roads are just too uneven. You would have to literally lift the wheelchair over the obstacles: large cracks, drainage gutters, curbs, stepping stones...not to mention getting it into house ruins!

Not even strollers would be easier to use and most people will have them folded to be able to walk around.

So you will have to rethink your visit to Pompeii on that day and rather go with Sorrento Italy and Capri Italy.

If you are taking kids with you to Pompeii, make sure you keep and eye on them as they might get hurt standing at the edge of the digs or climbing the walls. What's great is there are kid-friendly Pompeii tours and scavanger hunts to pick from, too!

Some parts of Pompeii and Pompeii homes have restricted access and that should be respected.

Ancient zebra crossing in Pomepii

The Ancient City of Pompeii: Opening Times

April to October: open daily from 8:30am - 7:30pm

November to March: open daily from 8:30am - 5:00pm

Closed: 1st January, 1st May, 25th December

To find out more up to date info on the opening times and entrance fees to the ancient city of Pompeii, visit their official website here.

One more thing to keep in mind: if you are to visit Pompeii ruins independently, try to get there early in the morning before the tour buses arrive.

The Ancient City Pompeii: Tour Guides

The site doesn't really have it's own official tour guides so you will find many of them hovering around the entrance offering their services, some of them just claiming to be guides.

The official guides authorised by the Regione Campania have to show their licences upon request.

If you need a guide when visiting Pompeii, you better book one through a reputable business online.

The Ancient City Pompeii: Miscellaneous Tips

There are always signs to help you get around Pompeii

Make sure you have bottled water with you before you enter the site, in summer it gets very hot and dusty.
Have a hat to protect yourself from the sun, it gets very hot here in summer and there isn't much shade.
Apply a lot of sunscreen, you will be walking in the sun for at least a couple of hours

Keep in mind you will be spending at least 2 hours inside the ancient city of Pompeii excavation site, that's the minimum you need to experience the site and get an idea of what it's all about.

Use the toilet before you enter the site, there are some at the main entrance. Once you enter the ruins, there is only one close to the main entrance and that's about it. You don't want to walk for 15 minutes from one side of Pompeii ruins to the other side when you really need to go!

Photographs and filming are authorized for private use

Smoking is not permitted

Pets are not allowed on the site

There is a cafe inside the site, apparently not serving food as of 2009. The restaurants outside the Pompeii entrance are quite expensive. You will be better off eating in Sorrento Italy or Naples.

You still haven't found Pompeii tour that would suite your interests? Looking for something different? Here's a few suggestions: