Pompeii Tickets Explained: Types, Prices and Free Days

A standard Pompeii ticket costs €20 for the ancient city (Pompeii Express), €25 with the suburban villas (Pompeii+) or €30 for three days across the Park's sites. Every ticket carries the holder's name, a day and an entry slot, and the Park admits at most 20,000 people a day. We read these prices on the Park's own pages on 5 November 2026, and this is the only page on the site where we print current prices.

pompeii.museum is an independent guide. We are not affiliated with the Archaeological Park of Pompeii or the Ministry of Culture, and we do not sell the Park's tickets. We do list tours run by third-party operators and may earn a commission if you book one through our links. The prices below come from the Park and the other sites' pages, never from a seller.

For most visits the answer is Express. It covers the excavations of Pompeii, the walled city with the Forum, the baths, the amphitheater and the houses that are open on the day. If you want the villas outside the walls, the Villa of the Mysteries and the Villa of Diomedes among them, you need Pompeii+ or the Express ticket plus a separate supplement. The table sets out what each option covers, as the Park listed it on 5 November 2026.

If you want the villas, yes. Express plus the €8 supplement comes to €28, so Pompeii+ at €25 is the cheaper way to the Villa of the Mysteries and also adds Villa Regina in Boscoreale. If you only plan to walk the city, Express is the right ticket and the villas add nothing you will use. Two practical points. The villas route is entered at the Herculaneum Gate, with the same last-entry rule as the Park (15:30 in winter, 17:30 in summer). And in the summer timetable Pompeii+ has fewer places to sell: 3,000 in the morning slot and 2,000 in the afternoon, against 12,000 and 3,000 for Express. A busy day can sell out the Plus first.

Since 15 November 2024 every Pompeii ticket, of every type, online or at the box office, carries the holder's name, the day and an entry time slot. Staff can ask for an ID at every entry to check that the name matches. If it does not, you are not admitted and you get no refund. The ticket cannot be passed to someone else, the name and the date cannot be changed after purchase, and it is not refundable unless the Park itself closes for an extraordinary reason. That is what the Park's regulation says, in articles 2 and 3.

Buy with your name exactly as it appears on the ID you will carry, and pick the day you will really use. The Park does not allow changes to either.

The Park's only box offices are inside the archaeological area, at the three entrances: Porta Marina, Piazza Anfiteatro and Piazza Esedra. The Park recommends buying in advance: you get a PDF, printed or on your phone, and you go straight to the turnstiles. That is all the Park means by a faster entry, and we unpack it in how to choose a Pompeii tour.

The Park runs two timetables. The summer one runs from 16 March to 14 October and the winter one from 15 October to 15 March. Within each day there are two entry slots, and the daily cap of 20,000 is split between them: 15,000 in the first slot and 5,000 in the second. The slot limits when you may walk in; the regulation speaks of an entry slot, not of how long you can stay. The regulation's Annex A writes the start of the second window as 13:01 and sets it by calendar month (to 31 March and from 1 November the last entry is 15:30, from 1 April to 31 October it is 17:30), which does not match the Park's timetable dates. In the weeks around each changeover, follow the last entry on the Park's timetable page.

In summer the Park gives the split by ticket type too: 12,000 Express and 3,000 Pompeii+ in the morning, 3,000 and 2,000 in the afternoon. The cap is less tight than it sounds. Our own arithmetic on the Park's monthly visitor counts gives an average of roughly 14,000 to 16,000 a day from April to October, so the limit bites on a few days, mainly free Sundays and holiday weekends. We chart which months are quiet in the crowd calendar.

On the first Sunday of every month entry to state archaeological sites is free, and the Park has set out how it works at Pompeii. According to the Park's notice of 23 May 2025, you do not book and you cannot buy online. You walk to the turnstiles, with no named ticket, and the 20,000 cap still applies. In November 2024 the Park cited peaks of more than 36,000 entries on one of the first Sundays of that summer, before the cap existed, which is nearly double the 20,000 limit. Read that number as a warning about the crowd, not an invitation.

Pompeii publishes no calendar of other free days that we could find, so we do not list dates for them. A caution on booking: a Ministry calendar entry for the free day of 4 November 2026 said reservation was mandatory, while the Park's notice of 23 May 2025 says the opposite for Pompeii. Check the Park's notices the week before you go. Herculaneum lists 25 April, 2 June and 4 November as free national days on its ticket page, and the Naples museum and Paestum publish their own free-day lists too.

Bring a document that proves your age or status, whatever your ticket says. We could not confirm from the Park's pages whether an online booking for a minor needs a €0 named ticket, so when you book for children, follow what the portal asks at checkout.

There is no combined Pompeii and Herculaneum ticket. Herculaneum's own FAQ says each site sells its own ticket at its own box office. The Pompeii ticket has one free extra that few visitors know about: for 30 days after issue it also admits you free to four partner sites, the archaeological museum of Volcei in Buccino, the castle of Lettere, the Longola archaeological park in Poggiomarino and the museum of Terzigno. They are small and far from the usual route, but if you are nearby they cost nothing.

Three of these sites list a Campania Artecard among the things they accept: Herculaneum, the Naples museum and Caserta. At the museum it buys a reduced ticket of €10 once the card's free entries are used, and at Caserta a reduced ticket of €7. The Pompeii ticket page does not mention the card, so do not plan on it there. We did not verify the card's own price or what it includes, and we leave it out of the comparison.

For what each site is actually like, we have separate guides to the Naples museum, Paestum, the Phlegraean Fields and Oplontis, Stabiae and Boscoreale.

The Park sells one thing: admission. Anyone else who lists Pompeii is selling admission plus something, and the price gap is the something. Four things can sit on top of the face value:

Take the face value, €20 for Express, and subtract it from the price. What is left should pay for something you can name. A "skip-the-line guide" listed at about the price of a ticket is either a guide-only product, with the entry to buy separately, or a very thin guide fee. Public listings include both kinds. The Park's regulation also lets accredited tour operators enter with a single group ticket in the operator's name, for groups of 5 to 35 people, with earphone systems compulsory above 15. That is how tours enter, and it is why a good guide listing can work out reasonable even before you count the commentary.

Since each ticket is named, a seller has to collect your name or the names in your party before the date. If a seller does not ask for names, ask why. For the Park's own prices the page to trust is the Park's, which names Vivaticket as its online channel. A luggage store at Porta Marina and Piazza Anfiteatro charges a fee, and the Park's audio guides cost €9 for one and €14 for two (children €5 and €9) at the gates, with ID.