Your pocket companion
A large-text observation guide to use while exploring. It is not a prescribed walking route: follow your booked circuit, open paths and the current visitor instructions.
These buried towns preserve the texture of Roman life at an extraordinary level of detail. Comparing streets, houses and paintings across the three sites is more revealing than seeing one alone.
Excavated streets and houses at Herculaneum · Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0
Visit Pompeii and Herculaneum on separate days, adding Oplontis for its painted domestic interiors.
Pompeii and Vesuvius seen from above · Carsten Steger · CC BY-SA 4.0
Street surfaces and stepping stones; thresholds, counters and domestic layouts; differences in preservation between the three sites
A surviving wall painting at Herculaneum · WolfgangRieger · Public domain
Pompeii preserves a broad urban plan, while Herculaneum offers another scale of town and different kinds of surviving material. Oplontis adds the setting of an elite villa. Their burial and excavation histories differ, so visiting more than one is a comparison rather than repetition. Shops, water distribution, streets and domestic decoration make ordinary life visible alongside grand houses. The most illuminating details often sit below the level of the famous wall paintings.
The columns of the Temple of Apollo · Mark de Nijs · CC BY-SA 4.0
Naples offers museums and transport; Pompeii and the surrounding towns reduce some journeys. Choose the base according to the sites you most want to revisit.
The gardens of Villa Poppaea at Oplontis · Miguel Hermoso Cuesta · CC BY-SA 4.0
Ask which houses are currently open and plan a route around them. Bring shade and water, and use the site map rather than wandering until tired.
A street through Pompeii · Niels Elgaard Larsen - (WT-en) Elgaard at English Wikivoyage · CC BY-SA 4.0
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