You know the story. Vesuvius erupted. Ash buried Pompeii in 6 meters of pumice. 2,000 people died. But knowing the story and walking the streets are different experiences separated by the entire width of human comprehension. You walk down a Roman road and the chariot ruts are still in the stone. You step into a house and the frescoes are still on the walls — red, ochre, blue, painted by someone who had no idea it was their last Tuesday. The bakery has carbonized bread in the oven. The thermopolium (fast food counter) has the menu painted on the wall. The brothel has explicit frescoes that served as a menu of a different kind. This is not a ruin. This is a city with a pause button, pressed 2,000 years ago, never unpaused.
Plan my Pompeii trip →€18 entry (€22 combo with Herculaneum). Book at ticketone.it or arrive at opening (9am April-October, 8:30am November-March). Allow 3-4 hours minimum. The site is 66 hectares — you cannot see everything in one visit. Most organized tours cover 30% of the excavations.
The route nobody takes: Most tourists enter from Porta Marina (closest to the train), see the Forum, and leave. Walk to the far end first — the Villa dei Misteri (initiation frescoes, the best-preserved in the Roman world), the Garden of the Fugitives (plaster casts of people who died trying to escape), and the Amphitheatre (the oldest surviving Roman amphitheatre, 70 BC, where Pink Floyd filmed a concert in 1971 with no audience). These are at the opposite end from the entrance. Almost nobody walks that far. That's your advantage.