Pompeii in the morning. The coast road after lunch.
Which Pompeii tour includes the crater, and which just drops you at the gate. What the Amalfi day really costs from Naples. Whether the pizza class is worth an evening. Reviews of every tour you can book around the bay.
Pompeii, the coast road, the catacombs, an oven in the Quartieri.
The four bookings a first trip to Naples is built around, what each one costs and how long it takes.
01The volcano dayPompeii Ruins & Mount Vesuvius Day TourPompeii in the morning, the crater rim after lunch. One minibus, both halves of the eruption, back by evening.
02The coast daySorrento, Positano & Amalfi Coast – Small Group TourSorrento, Positano and Amalfi in a small group. The road does the work; you get the stops and the photographs.
03Under the cityCatacombs of San Gennaro Entry Ticket & Guided TourEarly Christian frescoes in the catacombs under Sanita, run by the neighbourhood co-operative that reopened them.
04The pizza eveningPizza-Making Workshop with Drink and AppetizerYour own margherita in a wood oven in the centro storico, with a drink and something fried while it bakes.
Pompeii, Herculaneum, the crater: how to spend the day the eruption left you.
Everyone books Pompeii. The choice is what you attach to it, and whether you want a guide inside the gate. Five shapes of the same day, priced.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · Pompeii Ruins & Mount Vesuvius Day Tour
Pompeii and the craterThe ruins before noon, the summit path after lunch.
With an archaeologistTwo hours inside the walls with somebody who dug here.
Ticket onlyStraight through the turnstile, then wander at your own pace.
Herculaneum insteadSmaller, deeper, upper floors still standing. Half the crowd.
All 116 days out at the ruins →
Six places the bay hands you, and the best day out in each.
A city with a volcano at the end of the metro line, a buried town, a crater path, a coast road cut into cliffs, an island with a lit-up cave and the peninsula everything sails from.
The Amalfi road is the day trip. Somebody else should drive it.
Sorrento to Positano to Amalfi is fifty kilometres of hairpins with no room to park and a bus at every bend. Take the small group or the boat, and spend the day looking out of the window instead of at the wing mirror.
Naples rewards the traveller who books three hours and then stays out.
Everything in Naples →
The centro storico is one straight Greek street with two thousand years stacked either side of it. Below it are catacombs, an aqueduct and a Bourbon escape tunnel. Above it, a chapel with a marble veil nobody can explain. These three carry more travellers than anything else in town.
The city under the city
Greek quarry, Roman aqueduct, wartime shelter, then a Bourbon king’s escape route with cars abandoned in it. Forty metres down and about fifteen degrees cooler than the pavement.
The Veiled Christ, timed entry
A marble body under a marble sheet, carved in 1753 and still argued over. The chapel is small, entry is timed, and same-day tickets in season are mostly gone by breakfast.
Fried pizza, then the pastry shop
Pizza a portafoglio folded in four, a cuoppo of fried things eaten off paper, taralli, sfogliatella still warm. Somebody local walking you between the counters that locals queue at.
The days out around the bay that more travellers book than any other.
Every review on the site →Eight bookings with real momentum behind them, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Pompeii Ruins & Mount Vesuvius Day Tour
Travel from Naples to Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius by minivan or bus. A guide such as Salvatore, Elisa, or Tiziana leads the Pompeii visit, followed by pizza, a crater walk, and Bay of Naples views. The tour lasts about seven hours and includes entry tickets, transfers, lunch, and one drink.
From · $120
Read our review →
2
Sorrento, Positano and Amalfi Full-Day Tour
from $107
3
Sorrento, Positano & Amalfi Coast – Small Group Tour
from $76
4
Catacombs of San Gennaro Entry Ticket & Guided Tour
from $15
5
Pompeii Small Group Tour with an Archaeologist
from $35
6
Pizza-Making Workshop with Drink and Appetizer
from $39
7
Spanish Quarters Underground Guided Tour
from $17
8
Street Food Walking Tour with Local Guide
from $47
Naples invented the pizza and it still argues about the rest.
Dough proved for a day and baked in ninety seconds, sfogliatella eaten standing up, a limoncello poured cold at the end. Book the street-food walk before the heat, the oven session for the evening, the tasting for whenever the coast day gets rained off.
Pompeii is a full-sized town. Decide how you want to walk it.
Sixty-six hectares, most of it open, almost none of it shaded. Guided keeps you to the houses with the frescoes and the bakery with the millstones. On your own you will walk further and understand less. Either way, go early.
Every way into Pompeii →
What a day around Naples actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. The catacombs, the tunnels and the chapels sit at the bottom of it, and they are among the best things here.
Entry tickets, underground walks, street food crawls and the audio guides that get you through a gate.
The standard full days: Pompeii with Vesuvius, the coast road, the Capri ferry and the pizza classes.
Private guides, chartered boats around the islands and the drivers who wait while you eat.
Three things the bay does that nowhere else can.
Ruins, coastlines and caves are common enough. A town buried mid-morning, a cave lit from underneath and a live volcano you can walk into are not.
The Bourbon Tunnel
Ferdinand II had an escape route dug from the palace to the barracks in 1853 and never finished it. It crosses seventeenth-century aqueduct cisterns, filled up with rubble and wrecked cars when it served as an air-raid shelter, and the motorbikes confiscated in the sixties are still down there where the police left them.
- 1Catacombs of San Gennaro Entry Ticket & Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 7,941 reviews
- 2Spanish Quarters Underground Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 5,064 reviews
- 3Naples Underground Spanish Quarters with Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,886 reviews
The crater rim
The road stops at a car park at a thousand metres and the last stretch is a gravel path you walk. Twenty minutes up, and the crater opens under you with steam still coming off the far wall. Look the other way and the whole bay is laid out, Pompeii included, which makes the geography of 79 AD obvious in a way no museum manages.
- 1Pompeii Ruins & Mount Vesuvius Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 11,459 reviews
- 2Full-Day Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 4,235 reviews
- 3Pompeii & Mt.Vesuvius Day Tour from Naples with Pizza Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 2,901 reviews
The Blue Grotto
The entrance is a metre high, so you transfer into a rowing boat and lie flat while the oarsman pulls on a chain. Inside, sunlight comes through a second opening below the waterline and the whole cave glows. It shuts whenever the swell rises, which is often, so it goes early in the day and early in the trip.
- 1Day Trip to Capri and Blue Grotto From Naples & Sorrento★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,023 reviews
- 2Capri and Blue Grotto Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 966 reviews
- 3Small Group Tour from Naples to Blue Grotto, Anacapri and Capri★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 568 reviews
Four bookings around Naples that will not wait.
Most of this city can be sorted the night before over a beer in Piazza Bellini. These four run on timed slots, ferry timetables and a crater path that shuts when the weather turns.
- 01Downtown Tour with Veiled Christ & St Clare TicketsThe chapel holds a few dozen people at a time and sells timed slots. In season the same-day tickets are gone before mid-morning.
- 02Pompeii Ruins & Mount Vesuvius Day TourThe summit path closes in high wind and rain, and the shuttle runs to a fixed last ascent. A wet afternoon means no crater at all.
- 03Day Trip to Capri and Blue Grotto From Naples & SorrentoThe cave only opens when the sea is flat, and the rowing boats stop at lunchtime. One swell and the day is off.
- 04Gulf of Naples & Capri Sightseeing Boat TourThe island runs on ferry departures. Miss the return sailing and you are paying for a room in the most expensive place in the bay.
When Pompeii hits forty degrees, the answer is underground.
The excavations have almost no shade and the stone holds the heat until long after dark. July and August have one sensible shape: the ruins at opening time, then down into the catacombs, the tunnels and the cellars, and back out when the light goes soft.
By place - the bay, the coast and the islands
By kind of day - ruins, boat, table or tunnel
Naples, Pompeii, the crater, the coast: the run most first trips make.
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