Herculaneum
Ercolano, Italy
Herculaneum is the seaside Roman town that the eruption of Vesuvius buried under some 20 metres of volcanic flow in AD…
138 tickets & tours
Country
Best-preserved ancient ruins in Italy
10 of the best-preserved ancient sites in Italy, picked by hand: places where streets, walls, roofs or paintings survive well enough to read without a reconstruction. Each page says what to see and which ticket or tour to book.
| # | Site | Country | Why it makes the list |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Herculaneum | Italy | Houses keep their upper floors, carbonised wooden doors and beds, painted rooms and mosaics, better preserved than anything at Pompeii. |
| 2 | Pompeii | Italy | A whole Roman town of paved streets, frescoed houses, bakeries, baths, two theatres and the oldest surviving stone amphitheatre. |
| 3 | Villa Oplontis | Italy | Painted halls still cover their walls floor to ceiling beside a swimming pool over 60 metres long, the finest luxury villa around the bay. |
| 4 | Villa Romana del Casale | Italy | About 3,500 square metres of floor mosaics lie in their original rooms, the largest collection of Roman mosaics still in place. |
| 5 | Ostia Antica | Italy | Brick apartment blocks rise several storeys along paved streets, with warehouses, baths, bars and mosaic floors left where they were laid. |
| 6 | Necropolis of Tarquinia (Monterozzi) | Italy | Etruscan tomb chambers still carry their wall paintings of banquets, dancers and hunts, about twenty of them open at a time. |
| 7 | Nuraghe Santu Antine | Italy | Its Bronze Age central tower still stands 17 metres high, with corbelled corridors and stairs inside the walls that you can walk through. |
| 8 | Colosseum | Italy | On the north side the outer wall still rises to its full four storeys, and the underground passages below the arena are open. |
| 9 | Verona Arena | Italy | Its stone tiers, restored since the 16th century, are complete enough to seat about 15,000 opera-goers every summer. |
| 10 | Banditaccia Necropolis, Cerveteri | Italy | Grassy tumuli line streets of tombs whose chambers are carved inside to look like houses, with beds, columns and ceiling beams in stone. |
Pompeii
Pompei, Italy
Pompeii is the Roman town that Vesuvius buried in AD 79 and excavators have been uncovering since 1748.
687 tickets & tours
Villa Oplontis
Torre Annunziata, Italy
Villa Oplontis, also known as the Villa of Poppaea, is a vast Roman seaside villa in Torre Annunziata, buried by…
9 tickets & tours
Villa Romana del Casale
Piazza Armerina, Italy
The Villa Romana del Casale, near Piazza Armerina in central Sicily, is a grand country residence of the early 4th…
1 ticket or tour
Ostia Antica
Rome, Italy
Ostia Antica is the ancient port of Rome at the old mouth of the Tiber, 25 km from the centre of Rome, preserved by…
19 tickets & tours
Necropolis of Tarquinia (Monterozzi)
Tarquinia, Italy
The Monterozzi necropolis, on a ridge just outside Tarquinia north-west of Rome, holds about 6,000 Etruscan tombs,…
No online ticket
Nuraghe Santu Antine
Torralba, Italy
Nuraghe Santu Antine is one of the largest Bronze Age towers in Sardinia, built of basalt blocks on the Cabu Abbas…
No online ticket
Colosseum
Rome, Italy
The Colosseum is the largest amphitheatre the Romans ever built, an oval of travertine about 189 metres long that held…
349 tickets & tours
Verona Arena
Verona, Italy
The Verona Arena is a Roman amphitheatre of the early 1st century AD, built before the Colosseum and still used for…
21 tickets & tours
Banditaccia Necropolis, Cerveteri
Cerveteri, Italy
The Banditaccia necropolis outside Cerveteri is a city of the dead built by the Etruscans of Caere from the 9th to the…
No online ticket