Pompeii travel guide, in your ear
The city frozen in time, buried by Vesuvius in 79 AD, Pompeii is the world's most extraordinary archaeological site, offering a direct window into daily Roman life.
- 15 narrated stops
- ~45 minutes of stories
- 6 languages
- Offline ready
What is the Gingerguide Pompeii tour?
It is a self-guided audio walking tour of Pompeii, Italy, inside the Gingerguide travel guide app. The tour maps 15 sights and tells the story of each one in a two to three minute narration with a lifelike AI voice. When the story is not enough, ask the built-in AI guide about the place and keep the conversation going. Everything is available in six languages and works fully offline after a one-time download.
About Pompeii
Most ancient cities reach us as a few broken columns and a lot of imagination. Pompeii reaches us whole. You do not look at a ruin and picture the life; you walk a real Roman street, past shops with counters still in place, cart ruts worn into the paving, and election slogans still on the walls. It is the closest thing to a door into the ancient world, and it exists because of a catastrophe.
In the autumn of AD 79 Vesuvius, the volcano on the horizon, tore open and buried Pompeii under metres of ash in a day and a night. Most of the town had time to flee; around a thousand did not, and died in the burning clouds of gas and ash that came down the mountain on the second morning. The ash sealed everything it covered. What killed the city also kept it, almost exactly as it was, until it was found again in 1748.
To walk Pompeii is to be let into an ordinary day that never ended. You pass bakeries with the millstones still standing, bars with jars for wine and food set into marble counters, fountains at the corners, and everywhere the scribbles of the long gone: prices, insults, love notes, a favourite gladiator's name. It is the rarest thing an old place can give: not the palaces of emperors but the daily life of everyone else.
A few places stay with you. The Forum still opens to the sky with Vesuvius framed at the end, calm and green and close. The great stone amphitheatre, older than the Colosseum, once held twenty thousand people. And in a garden near the city's edge lie some of the plaster casts: hollow shapes left in the ash where bodies had lain, filled to give back the form of people in their final moments. Stand there quietly.
Give it a slow half-day, and wear real shoes. Late in the afternoon, when the groups thin, find a quiet side street and stand in it: the light low and gold on the stone, a lizard on a wall, Vesuvius still on the skyline. For a moment two thousand years folds to nothing, and you stand in a town on an ordinary evening, the way someone once did, just before the sky changed.
One day in Pompeii
A simple way to walk the highlights, following the route order in the app. Swap anything; Pompeii rewards detours.
What to see in Pompeii: all 15 stops
Every place below has its own narrated story in the app, and its own answers when you want more. Walk them in any order; the map shows what is around you.
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The Forum
The political and civic heart of Pompeii, a grand open square surrounded by temples and civic buildings, with Vesuvius dominating the horizon through the temple columns.
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Plaster Casts of the Victims
The haunting plaster casts created by archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli in 1863, poured into the voids left by decomposed bodies in the hardened volcanic ash, preserving the final moments of eruption victims.
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House of the Faun
The largest and most luxurious private house in Pompeii, home to the Alexander Mosaic (now in Naples) and a charming bronze dancing faun, the finest example of Hellenistic domestic architecture in existence.
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Temple of Jupiter
The dominant temple at the northern end of the Forum, dedicated to the Capitoline triad of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, with Vesuvius perfectly framed in the gap between the columns.
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Villa of the Mysteries
A suburban villa just outside the city gates with the most extraordinary fresco cycle in the ancient world, a sequence of large-scale paintings depicting an initiation into the Dionysian mysteries, still vivid after 2,000 years.
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Lupanar (Ancient Brothel)
The only purpose-built brothel in Pompeii, featuring erotic frescoes above each cubicle that served as a menu, graffiti reviews on the walls, and extraordinary insights into Roman commercial sexuality.
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Thermopolium: Roman Fast Food Counter
A remarkably preserved Roman fast-food counter with food still in its terracotta jars, a skeleton was found behind the counter, and the dolia (food containers) still contain traces of the last meals ever served.
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Amphitheatre of Pompeii
The oldest surviving Roman amphitheatre in the world (70 BC), with a capacity of 20,000, twice the city's population, and the site of Pink Floyd's famous 1971 concert filmed without an audience.
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House of the Vettii
The finest surviving example of a wealthy freedman's house, with spectacular mythological frescoes in the dining rooms and the famous Priapus fresco at the entrance, owned by two brothers who made their fortune in trade.
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Forum Baths
The best-preserved Roman bath complex in Pompeii, with intact caldarium, tepidarium, and frigidarium, featuring original stucco ceiling decoration and a cold plunge pool that visitors can still see in near-perfect condition.
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Basilica of Pompeii
The oldest surviving Roman basilica (2nd century BC), the law courts and commercial hall of ancient Pompeii, whose architectural form would become the template for the Christian church building across Europe.
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Temple of Apollo
The oldest temple in Pompeii, predating the Roman city by centuries, with bronze statues of Apollo and Diana (copies) and Ionic columns that have stood for nearly 2,500 years.
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Via dell'Abbondanza: Main Street
Pompeii's main shopping and commercial street, with stepping stones for crossing, ruts from cart wheels, painted shop fronts, electoral graffiti, and the most complete surviving picture of a Roman street in daily use.
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Orto dei Fuggiaschi: Garden of the Fugitives
The most emotionally powerful site in Pompeii, a garden where 13 victims were found together in the positions where they fell, overwhelmed by the pyroclastic surge as they tried to escape the eruption.
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Pompeii Antiquarium
The on-site museum displaying artefacts from daily life in Pompeii, jewellery, coins, surgical tools, food containers, and objects that bring the reality of Roman domestic and commercial life into vivid focus.
Three things most visitors miss
The Forum
The Forum of Pompeii was closed to wheeled traffic, stone posts in the road blocked carts from entering, making it a pedestrian-only civic space, a concept not reinvented in Europe until the 20th century.
Plaster Casts of the Victims
Giuseppe Fiorelli's 1863 plaster-casting technique was later adapted to cast not just human victims but also wooden objects like doors and furniture that had burned away, leaving only their ash-impressions behind.
House of the Faun
The House of the Faun covers nearly 3,000 square metres, an entire city block, making it not just the largest house in Pompeii but one of the largest private dwellings in the ancient Roman world.
Pompeii tour: questions and answers
Do I need a tour guide in Pompeii?
Not a human one. Gingerguide covers Pompeii with 15 narrated sights, so you get the stories a guide would tell, at your own pace and on your own route. And if a story leaves you with a question, you can ask the built-in AI guide and discuss the place right there, the way you would with a guide.
How many stops does the Pompeii audio tour have?
The Pompeii guide covers 15 sights. Each one has a researched story of roughly three minutes, about 45 minutes of listening in total. You choose the order and the pace; the tour is self-guided.
Does the Pompeii tour work offline?
Yes. You can download Pompeii in the app, audio, photos, and offline map tiles included. After the download, the full tour works without an internet connection.
Which languages does the Pompeii guide support?
Every Pompeii narration is available in English, Spanish, French, German, Turkish, and Chinese. You can switch the language in the app at any time.
Is the Pompeii audio guide free?
The Gingerguide app is free to download, and Pompeii includes a free preview: you can see all 15 sights on the map at no cost. A premium subscription unlocks the full stories, audio narration, and the offline download.
Hear Pompeii tell its own story.
Preview all 15 Pompeii stops free in the Gingerguide app.