How Long to Spend at Pompeii: Itineraries from 2 Hours to 2 Days

How long do you need at Pompeii? Plan on about 2 hours for the Forum and one great house, about 4 hours for half a day across the city center, and 7 to 8 hours for a full day that crosses the whole excavation. Add a second day if you want Herculaneum or the villa at Oplontis. These are our estimates, built from the stops on each route. The Park of Pompeii publishes no current figure beyond its own 1.5-hour guided route. Below are four routes, each with an entrance, a sequence of places with their addresses, and a time.

The ticket is for one entry, on one day, in one time slot. Pick the route first, then the slot: a morning entry is what makes the long routes possible.

The answer depends on how many stops you make, when your slot starts and how much daylight is left. Pompeii is a city, not a building. The Park's 2022 services charter gives its area as roughly 66 hectares, about 45 of them excavated, and says about 30 percent of the archaeological area can be visited. The Park's FAQ gives a different figure, 44 hectares, so we quote the charter and attribute it. What matters for you is that the streets are long and the paving is uneven. The Park's step-free route alone runs more than 3.5 kilometers from Piazza Anfiteatro to the Sanctuary of Venus, although the Forum and the Amphitheatre are only 878 meters apart in a straight line (our calculation from Wikidata coordinates, not a walking distance).

The numbers on this page work like this: about 10 to 12 minutes at a minor stop, 15 to 20 at a major building such as a bathhouse or the Large Theatre, plus walking, one 20-minute break, and a margin for the security check at the gate. They are our assumptions. If you linger in front of paintings, add time. If you walk fast and read little, subtract.

If you search for official durations, you will find four itineraries on the Park's map page, under the heading "Plan your visit": 2 hours, 3 hours, 5 hours and 7 hours. The pages were published on 22 May 2018 and last modified on 19 July 2021. Three things have changed since.

• The stops. Buildings on those routes have opened and closed for works since, and the Park keeps a changing list of what can be visited.
• The entry process. The ticket is now personal, tied to a day and a time slot, and the document is checked at every entry. Metal detectors and bag checks are part of the gate.
• The list of open buildings. The Park changes it from week to week. A route that depends on a named house is a route that may need a Plan B.

The Park's FAQ also says visitors need "a minimum of 2-3 hours". That page was published in May 2018, so we do not treat the line as current guidance. The only duration the Park attaches to a schedule is the 1.5-hour themed route, described below. Everything else on this page, including our four routes, is our own planning.

Addresses use the Roman city's grid: Regio (district), insula (block), then the number of the doorway. VII.8.1 means Regio VII, insula 8, entrance 1. The stops below come with that code so you can find them on the Park's map. The codes come from archaeological references; where the Park does not publish one, we say so. Which houses are open changes constantly, so check the Park's list at pompeiisites.org/en/houses on the day. If a stop is shut, skip to the next one on the route. The routes are built so that a missing house costs you minutes, not the plan.

Enter at Porta Marina, the gate nearest the Pompei Scavi-Villa dei Misteri train station (about 120 meters in a straight line, our calculation from mapped points). The Forum is another 250 meters.

1. Marina Gate and the city walls, the gate you walk through.
2. The Basilica, VIII.1.1, the law court and business hall on the Forum's south-west corner.
3. The Sanctuary of Apollo, VII.7.32, where the Park documents an archaic temple of the 6th century BC beneath the later building.
4. The Forum, the central square.
5. The Temple of Jupiter, VII.8.1, at the north end of the Forum.
6. The Macellum, VII.9.7, the food market, and the Building of Eumachia, VII.9.1.
7. The Forum Baths, VII.5.2, with separate entrances for women and men.
8. One house of your choice from the Park's list. The House of the Faun, VI.12.2, is 202 meters from the Forum in a straight line; the House of the Vettii, VI.15.1, is 294.

That is about two hours at an unhurried pace. The Park's own 1.5-hour themed route, "Civic Pompeii" ("Pompei civica"), covers nearly the same ground with a guide: Porta Marina, Via Marina, the Forum, the Macellum, the Forum Baths, Via della Fortuna and the Vicolo dei Vettii. It leaves from Porta Marina Superiore at set times, in groups of about 20 with radio headsets, for a supplement on top of the entry ticket; the Park publishes the current start times on its themed-routes page. Under-10s go free. The Park's page names the House of the Vettii as a stop, so check that it is open. Our page on how to choose a tour explains when a guide earns the fee.

This is the route for people who want to say they have seen Pompeii, not a corner of it. It needs a morning slot, which means entering between 9:00 and 13:00, and ideally the early part of it. Enter at Piazza Anfiteatro, the gate nearest the Pompei Santuario station on the Naples-Poggiomarino line (about 570 meters away in a straight line, our calculation). It is also the access point of the Park's step-free route.

1. The Amphitheatre, II.6, which the Park says held up to 20,000 spectators. The Park's list of buildings, read on 5 November 2026, carries a note that the Amphitheatre is visible only from its southern entrance (no year is given), so do not count on walking in.
2. The Great Palaestra, II.7.1, now the home of the permanent exhibition on the eruption, the casts and the organic finds.
3. The House of Octavius Quartio, II.2.2, with its long garden of canals, and the House of Venus in the Shell, II.3.3.
4. West along Via dell'Abbondanza: the Fullery of Stephanus, I.6.7, the House of the Ceii, I.6.15, the House and Thermopolium of Vetutius Placidus, I.8.8-9, the House of Menander, I.10.4, and the House of the Lovers, I.10.11.
5. The Stabian Baths, VII.1.8, 637 meters from the Amphitheatre in a straight line.
6. The Forum and its buildings, as in Route 1, then the House of the Faun and the House of the Vettii.
7. The Large Theatre, VIII.7.20, and out by Piazza Esedra.

Two additions only make sense if you are ahead of schedule. The Garden of the Fugitives, I.21.2, with its victims' casts, lies at the far south-east end of the city. The Villa of the Mysteries is outside the walls, 781 meters from the Forum in a straight line, and it is reached with the Pompeii+ ticket; our tickets page explains what that ticket adds. The Park gives the last access at Porta Ercolano for the villa as 15:30 in winter and 17:30 in summer.

Lunch happens inside. The ticket allows one entry and no re-entry, and the Park bans eating outside designated places, so bring water and a snack for the designated areas and check the Park's visitor-services page for where food is served.

Where the full day goes wrong. People enter at 13:30, hoping to do the long route in the afternoon, and run into the closing time. People climb the Amphitheatre's side first, then discover the Forum is 878 meters away. People save the Villa of the Mysteries for last and arrive after its final entry. If your entry slot is the second one, choose Route 1 or 2.

The calendar decides the length of the day. As of November 2026 the Park closes at 19:00 from 16 March to 14 October (last entry 17:30) and at 17:00 from 15 October to 15 March (last entry 15:30). In mid-December the sun sets at 16:35 (our calculation with NOAA formulas), so the last entry at the gate comes 65 minutes before it. A winter visit that starts at the 9:00 opening has eight hours of Park time at most, and Route 3 does not fit comfortably into them. In June the day is long, but the heat is the limit, not the light.

The second slot, which opens at 13:00, shortens the day more than most people expect. In winter it leaves 3.5 hours between 13:30 and the 17:00 close, and in summer about 5.5 hours before 19:00. That is Route 1 or a brisk Route 2, not Route 3. If you want to see Pompeii after the regular closing, the Park has run separate evening openings in several summers; our page on Pompeii after dark records the dates.

The Park lists the three entrances on its how-to-get-there page. Trains and buses are covered in our getting-there guide. For the buildings themselves, from the House of the Faun to the Large Theatre, the address book of houses and buildings gives each one's code and what to look for.