What to see in Pompeii: fifteen places worth your time

Short answer: the Forum, the Stabian Baths, the House of the Faun, the House of the Vettii, the Lupanar, a bakery, a snack bar, the theatres, the amphitheatre and the casts in the Garden of the Fugitives. That is a full day. Pompeii covers about sixty-six hectares and a third of it is still unexcavated; nobody sees all of it, so the useful question is not what exists but what deserves the hours you have.

The civic centre

The Forum. A rectangular square about a hundred and forty metres long, closed to wheeled traffic by stone bollards, with the Temple of Jupiter at the north end and Vesuvius framed directly behind it. Start here: everything else in the city makes more sense once you have stood where the town voted, traded and gossiped.

The Basilica, beside it, was the law court and business hall, not a church. The Forum Granaries next door are now a storeroom behind metal grilles: rows of amphorae, a marble table, and some of the most photographed plaster casts of victims.

The great houses

• House of the Faun — the largest private house in Pompeii, a whole city block. The bronze dancing faun stands in the atrium pool; the Alexander Mosaic on the floor is a replica, the original is in the Naples Archaeological Museum.
• House of the Vettii — built by two brothers born into slavery who got rich in the wine trade. Bold red Fourth Style walls and a frieze of cupids at work in the main dining room.
• House of the Tragic Poet — small, but its threshold has the famous mosaic dog with the words CAVE CANEM, «beware of the dog».
• House of Menander — an aristocratic house where a hoard of 118 pieces of silver tableware was found in 1930.
• House of Octavius Quartio — the house to see for its garden: long water channels, pergolas and an outdoor dining couch.

Everyday life

• The Stabian Baths — the oldest public baths in the city, with changing room, warm, hot and cold rooms in order, and the hollow floors that carried the heating.
• The Lupanar — the town’s purpose-built brothel: small stone beds and painted scenes above the doors. Expect a queue in the corridor.
• A bakery — the mill of Popidius Priscus, with hourglass-shaped basalt millstones and a domed oven.
• A thermopolium, the Roman snack bar: a masonry counter with jars set into it. The one excavated recently in Regio V still has its painted ducks and rooster.
• Via dell’Abbondanza — the high street, with stepping stones across the road and wheel ruts worn into the paving.

Entertainment

The Large Theatre held about five thousand people and the small covered Odeon next to it was for music and recitals. At the far eastern end, the amphitheatre — built around 70 BC, it is the oldest surviving stone amphitheatre in the world, older than the Colosseum by about a century. The Great Palaestra, the exercise ground with a swimming pool, lies right beside it.

The casts

The Garden of the Fugitives, near the Nocera Gate, holds thirteen casts of people who died together trying to leave the city. It is the most affecting place in Pompeii and it is at the opposite end from the main entrance, which is why many visitors miss it.

Outside the walls

The Villa of the Mysteries, with its room of life-size painted figures, stands outside the Herculaneum Gate at the end of the Street of Tombs. It is now on a separate route that needs the ticket that includes the suburban villas, so check your ticket before you walk out there.

How to fit it in

Enter at the west and finish at the amphitheatre, or the other way round: that crosses the city once instead of twice. Houses are sometimes closed for restoration with no notice; when one is, the street usually has another open house a block away. And download whatever you plan to use before you arrive — inside the excavations there is almost no signal.

Updated 2026-10-27