Naples: Pompeii with an archaeologist, the Farnese marbles, pizza in the Sanità
14 playbooks shared · added to 45 trips
- 8 am1Sfogliatella riccia straight from the oven at AttanasioNaples
Behind the station on Vico Ferrovia; you smell it a street before you find it. Riccia, not frolla — the shell should shatter down your front. Ask for one off the tray that has just come out and eat it standing in the paper, which is the only way it works. Verified 2026-09-06: open Tue–Sun 06:30–19:30 and closed Mondays — which, with the MANN shut on Tuesdays, makes this a Wednesday-to-Sunday day.
6 min walk · 450 m - 8:40 am2Circumvesuviana from Porta Nolana to Pompei ScaviNaples
Board at Porta Nolana, not Garibaldi: it is the line's origin one stop earlier, and it is the difference between a seat and forty minutes standing in a crush. Take the Sorrento line and get off at Pompei Scavi–Villa dei Misteri, which is the stop for the Porta Marina gate. The Campania Express is the reserved, air-conditioned alternative at roughly five times the fare and is worth it in August.
21 min by train or taxi · 21 km - 9:30 am3Pompeii from Porta Marina with a licensed archaeologistPompei
Three gates, and which you use changes the day. Porta Marina Inferiore is the station gate and the one online tickets skip the line at; Piazza Esedra sits beside it; Piazza Anfiteatro is at the far end, in the modern town. Entry is €23, named, time-slotted, with a 20,000-a-day cap. A private licensed archaeologist runs about €160 for the group and is what turns a hot field of walls into three hours — ask specifically for the House of the Vettii, reopened in 2023, and for the Villa dei Misteri last, once the coaches have gone. The free first Sunday of the month is exactly as bad as it sounds.
15 min walk · 1.1 km - 1:15 pm4Lunch at Il Principe, Piazza Bartolo LongoPompei
Leave the site by the Piazza Anfiteatro gate rather than walking back across it, and this is two minutes away. They cook a handful of dishes reconstructed from Roman sources and it is not a gimmick — the cassata taken from a fresco is genuinely good. Everything within sight of the Porta Marina gate is a coach canteen.
3 min walk · 250 m - 2:30 pm5Circumvesuviana back from Pompei SantuarioPompei
You do not have to walk back to Porta Marina: Pompei Santuario, on the Poggiomarino line, is three minutes from the restaurant and also runs to Napoli Garibaldi. Half-hourly, no air conditioning, and sit on the left for Vesuvius.
24 min by train or taxi · 24 km - 4 pm6MANN: the Farnese marbles, the mosaics, the Secret CabinetNaples
Everything portable from Pompeii is here, which is why it belongs on the same day as the site and not on a different one. Verified 2026-09-06: open Wed–Mon 09:00–19:30 with last entry 18:30, closed Tuesdays — with two 2026 exceptions, open Tuesday 2 June and Tuesday 8 December and shut the Wednesday after each. Go up to the mosaics first — the Alexander Mosaic came back on display in 2025 after its restoration — then the Gabinetto Segreto, a separate small room the desk may give you a timed slot for. The Farnese Bull downstairs is carved from one block of marble and deserves ten minutes rather than a photograph.
6 min walk · 450 m - 7:30 pm7Pizza at Concettina ai Tre SantiNaples
Fourth generation on Via Arena della Sanità. Book, or take a number and drink a beer in the street with everybody else. Start with the montanara fritta and follow it with a plain marinara — the fried things are what this place does that the famous queue at Da Michele does not.
8 min by train or taxi · 2.1 km - 9 pm8A fiocco di neve at PoppellaNaples
Three minutes' walk. One thing only: a small brioche filled with cold sheep's-milk cream, invented in this shop and copied across the city badly. They come straight out of the fridge and there is still a queue for them at nine at night.