Naples and Pompeii Tour

Group tour
Duration: 8 h
By car
Up to 16 guests

Overview

Vesuvius took Pompeii in a day in AD 79 and preserved it for seventeen centuries, which is why the streets, the shops and the graffiti are still there to walk through. This eight-hour tour pairs the excavations with Naples itself, a city that lives on top of its own ruins and has the largest historic centre in Europe.

The tour covers:

Pompeii with a guide, skip-the-line tickets included
The forum, the houses, the baths and the plaster casts
The old streets of Naples and Via dei Tribunali
The cathedral of San Gennaro and the Fontanelle ossuary
The tunnels under the city and Castel dell’Ovo

Please note that the tour order and the time spent at each venue may vary.

What you will see

Pompeii with skip-the-line tickets and a guide throughout
Streets, houses and shops buried by Vesuvius in AD 79
The historic centre of Naples, the largest in Europe
The underground tunnels beneath the old city
Castel dell'Ovo, the cathedral and Via dei Tribunali

Itinerary

Meeting at the port

Meeting at Naples cruise port, where your guide and vehicle are waiting. The start time is adjusted to your ship's arrival and confirmed in your letter.
Drive to Pompeii

About forty minutes around the bay, with Vesuvius ahead of you the whole way
Pompeii excavations

A guided walk through Pompeii, buried under ash and pumice when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79 and found again by accident in 1748. Because the town was sealed rather than flattened, it kept everything: paved streets with cart ruts, bakeries with their ovens and millstones, election notices painted on walls, the forum, the theatres, the brothel and the baths. The hollows left in the ash by bodies were filled with plaster from 1863 to make the casts that are the most affecting thing on the site. Excavation is still going on, and about a third of the town is still buried.
Historic centre of Naples

A walk through the old city, the largest historic centre in Europe and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995. Via dei Tribunali follows the line of a Greek street laid out in the 5th century BC and is still lined with churches, workshops, pizzerias and market stalls.
Naples Cathedral

The cathedral, built at the end of the 13th century, which holds the phial of the blood of San Gennaro that the city gathers three times a year to see liquefy. It is the most Neapolitan event there is, and it is taken very seriously.
Underground Naples

A descent into the tunnels below the streets, quarried for tuff to build the city above, then used as Greek and Roman aqueducts and as air-raid shelters in the last war.
Fontanelle Cemetery

The Fontanelle ossuary in an old quarry, where the bones of plague and cholera dead were laid and where Neapolitans adopted individual skulls to care for and pray to, a cult the church tried repeatedly to suppress.
Castel dell'Ovo

The oldest castle in the city, on the islet where Naples was founded, named for a legend that Virgil hid a magic egg in its foundations and that the castle falls if the egg breaks.
Return to the ship

The drive back to the cruise port