Pompeii and Herculaneum with an Archaeologist, and Lacryma Christi

Archaeological Park of Pompeii

The guide here is an archaeologist who has worked in Pompeii for 27 years, and the size and the state of the site still surprise most people who arrive expecting rubble. The route takes in the Forum, the public baths, private houses, taverns, shops and theatres, with frescoes and mosaics still on the walls and floors of the houses. The pace is yours, and the guide makes sure everyone in the group understands what they are looking at rather than just seeing it. Crowds are avoided where possible, and the itinerary bends to what you want from it.

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Visiting Piazza Porta Marina is the perfect start to a fun…

Piazza Porta Marina is where the modern world stops and the archaeological park starts, through the double-arched Porta Marina gate set into the city walls. The Antiquarium museum is a few steps away, with casts and objects that give the rest of the visit its context, and so are the Suburban Baths and their erotic frescoes. From here the stone ramp of Via Marina climbs into the Forum, which is a good way to arrive at it.

Temple of Apollo

The Temple of Apollo stands at the edge of the Forum and is one of the oldest sacred sites in the city, which is what makes it useful: religious practice can be traced through it from Greek to Roman. The remains of 48 columns stand around it. It works as an open-air museum. Bronze replicas of Apollo and Diana, an original sundial column, and, from the raised podium, Vesuvius squarely in the background.

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The Forum of Pompeii is a captivating experience as you…

The Forum was the centre of political, religious and commercial life. The paving is the original travertine, and the buildings around it are the grandest in the city: the Temple of Jupiter, the Basilica, the Macellum market, and the mensa ponderaria, the official weighing table that settled arguments about quantity. It is pedestrian-only and large, with Vesuvius in the distance behind it.

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The tour of the House of the Vettii is an unmissable…

The House of the Vettii reopened after a long restoration and is the most decorated house in Pompeii: Fourth Style frescoes in exceptional condition, and the painting of Priapus at the entrance that the owners, two wealthy former slaves, put there for protection. Inside, the Room of the Cupids shows small figures at work in the ancient trades, and the mythological scenes in the dining rooms have kept their colour for 2,000 years. The peristyle garden has working fountain statues and planting reconstructed from the evidence.

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A visit to the Insula dei Casti Amanti (Insula of the…

The Insula dei Casti Amanti, on Via dell'Abbondanza, reopened with raised walkways over an entire city block, houses and a bakery included, so you look down into an excavation that is still being worked. The fresco that names it shows a couple kissing. Near it are charcoal sketches of gladiators, drawn by children nearly 2,000 years ago. Archaeologists are often at work below the ramps.

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Teatro Grande

The Teatro Grande is one of the earliest stone theatres anywhere, built in the 2nd century BC. The horseshoe of tiers preserves the social order: marble seats for the elite, plainer sections above them for everyone else. The acoustics carry a whisper from the stage to the back of 5,000 seats. It is still used for performances, with the hills and Vesuvius behind the stage.

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Visiting the Antiquarium of Pompeii is a fascinating…

The Antiquarium sits at the Porta Marina entrance and holds the most fragile things found on the site. The hardest part of it is the gallery of plaster casts: the victims in the positions the ash left them in, and a guard dog among them. Digital displays and recent finds fill in the rest. Seeing it before walking the streets changes how the streets read.

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Indulge in a relaxing escape to the organic "Cantina del…

The Cantina del Vesuvio is an organic winery inside the Vesuvius National Park, with the bay on one side and the crater above. It starts with a 15-minute walk through the vineyards and an explanation of the Lacryma Christi wines. Then a set-menu lunch with five local wines: bruschetta, cheeses and cured meats to start, spaghetti with Vesuvius cherry tomatoes and meatballs, and Neapolitan pastiera at the end. Vegetarian and gluten-free versions are available. The cost is €50 per person, or €60 with the superior wine upgrade, paid on site by card or cash. Fabrizio makes the booking. Wine and olive oil can be shipped home.

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Archeological Park of Herculaneum

Herculaneum with an archaeologist, on a route picked to take in the best of it rather than everything in order. Villas, and objects that should not have survived at all. The pace and the emphasis follow whoever is on the tour.

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Antiquarium di Ercolano

The Antiquarium of Herculaneum holds the most delicate finds, and what makes it unusual is the organic material: carbonised wooden furniture and textiles, which almost never survive elsewhere in the Roman world. The Herculaneum Treasure, found with victims at the old shoreline, is here, along with statues and frescoes lifted out of the volcanic mud. Together they explain what the town was: a wealthy place by the sea, and what happened to the people in it.

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Visiting the Boat Pavilion in Herculaneum is a profoundly…

The Boat Pavilion, near the ancient shoreline, holds the carbonised keel of a boat nine metres long, found upturned where the pyroclastic flow left it. It may have been a military vessel sent to help with the evacuation. Around it are fishing weights, nets and a carbonised rope, which say the rest about how the town lived. The organic material survived because the volcanic mud sealed the oxygen out.

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The Ancient Beach in Herculaneum

The Ancient Beach reopened in 2024 after restoration, and it is where the events of 79 AD ended for a great many people. You stand on the original volcanic sand and look up at the arches of the fornici, the boat sheds, where the remains of more than 300 people were found together. The beach sits several metres below the modern ground level, which shows how far the flows changed the shape of the coast.

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Casa dei Cervi

The House of the Stags is a large aristocratic villa laid out the other way round from most: a panoramic terrace and an open garden facing the sea breeze and the Gulf of Naples. It is named after the two marble groups found in its garden, stags being brought down by hounds, which are among the best known sculptures from the town.

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Casa di Nettuno e Anfitrite

The House of Neptune and Amphitrite has one of the brightest wall mosaics left from the Roman world, the two gods worked in gold and blue glass paste. The summer triclinium outside is decorated with shells and lava stone. Next door is the attached shop, generally reckoned the best-preserved grocer's from antiquity, with the original wooden shelves and the carbonised storage bins that held grain and pulses still in place.

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Visiting the Women’s Baths (Terme Femminili) in Herculaneum…

The Women's Baths at Herculaneum are more complete than anything comparable at Pompeii. Through the original vaulted doorway, the changing room has a black and white floor mosaic of Triton among dolphins. The wooden shelves the women used for their clothes are still there, and the barrel vaults still carry their stucco. The rooms run in sequence: the tepidarium, with a labyrinth mosaic on the floor, then the caldarium with its hollow-wall heating.

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Touring the Palestra (Gymnasium) in Herculaneum is a…

The Palestra is the gymnasium, and its scale says what the town thought of itself. The centrepiece is a cross-shaped swimming pool with a fountain shaped as a five-headed hydra, which is as much hydraulics as sculpture. The courtyard was lined with columns. A carbonised wooden statue of a local benefactor was found here, intact.

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