The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites in Campania
5 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable archaeological sites in Campania are Pompeii, Paestum and Herculaneum. The list covers 5 archaeological sites. Last updated 14 October 2026.
No region in the Mediterranean preserves the ancient world quite like Campania. Greek colonists settled its coast in the eighth century BC, founding Cumae and later Poseidonia, and Romans turned the Bay of Naples into the favourite retreat of their elite. Then the volcanoes intervened: the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 sealed whole towns under ash and pumice, and the restless ground of the Campi Flegrei slowly drowned others, preserving everyday Roman life in a way no ordinary ruin can.
Pompeii is the best known of these buried towns, with streets, bakeries, temples and an amphitheatre laid out much as they were on the day of the eruption. Herculaneum, smaller and engulfed by hotter flows, kept wooden beams, furniture and even upper storeys, and its Villa of the Papyri yielded a library of carbonised scrolls. Just outside the walls of Pompeii, the Villa of the Mysteries is famous for a room-sized fresco of figures in a Dionysian rite against a deep red background.
Further south, Paestum shows the Greek side of Campania: three Doric temples from the sixth and fifth centuries BC stand among the fields, among the best preserved anywhere. On the Gulf of Pozzuoli, the Roman resort of Baia has partly slipped beneath the sea, and its mosaics and statues now lie in an underwater archaeological park.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pompeii | Archaeological site | |
| 2 | Paestum | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 3 | Herculaneum | Ruins | ✓ |
| 4 | Villa of the Mysteries | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 5 | Baia | Abandoned village |
01 Pompeii
Pompei
Italy · 23.2 km from Naples40.751° N 14.490° E
Glen Scarborough from The Central Coast, Australia · CC BY 2.0 Excavation has not stopped. New digs since 2018 have uncovered, among much else, harnessed horses at a villa outside the town and, in 2024, a banqueting hall painted with scenes from the Trojan War. The site has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1997.
Did you know? The town had nearly a hundred thermopolia, street counters selling hot food and drink to people who rarely cooked at home.
02 Paestum
Italy · 34.9 km from Salerno40.423° N 15.006° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by SCAPIN from Pixabay Do not skip the National Archaeological Museum next to the site. It holds the Tomb of the Diver of about 470 BCE, the only Greek painted tomb found here, with a young man diving into water on the lid and banquet scenes on the sides, as well as Lucanian tomb paintings full of horses, the Archaic metope reliefs from the sanctuary of Hera at the mouth of the Sele river, and the bronze vessels, still with traces of honey, found sealed in the underground shrine of a local hero. Paestum is part of the Cilento World Heritage Site listed in 1998, and the modern village beside the ruins is a beach resort.
Did you know? Some capitals of the First Temple of Hera still carry faint traces of their original paint.
03 Herculaneum
Scavi archeologici di Ercolano
Italy · 9.7 km from Naples40.806° N 14.348° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Stormydog101 from Pixabay The strongest moment is at the old shoreline. In the vaulted boathouses facing what was then the beach, excavations since 1980 have found the remains of about 340 people who had fled there and waited for boats that never came; casts of the skeletons lie where they were found, and one of them, an officer with a dagger and belt, may have been part of a rescue mission. Since 2001 the Herculaneum Conservation Project has turned the site round after years of neglect. The Villa of the Papyri, north-west of the town, is still mostly underground.
04 Villa of the Mysteries
Villa dei Misteri
Italy · 22.1 km from Naples40.754° N 14.477° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Maarten Heerlien from Voorschoten, The Netherlands · CC BY 2.0 Pompeii was a prosperous Roman town of merchants, farmers and vineyard owners near the mouth of the Sarno river; preserved by the same disaster, its streets, houses and public buildings now give the most detailed picture of everyday Roman life anywhere.
Did you know? Dionysus and Ariadne appear together at the centre of the main painted wall.
05 Baia
Italy · 14.9 km from Naples40.817° N 14.070° E
Joseph Meyer · Public domain That sunken city has been a protected underwater archaeological park since 2002, one of very few in the Mediterranean. Its most celebrated find came in 1969, when divers off Punta Epitaffio located marble statues from the banqueting hall of a villa belonging to the emperor Claudius, decorated as a sea cave with a group showing Ulysses offering wine to the Cyclops. The originals now stand in the archaeological museum of the Campi Flegrei inside the Castle of Baia, a fortress raised in the 16th century under the Spanish viceroy Pedro de Toledo on the headland above the bay, while copies have been returned to the seabed.
Did you know? In AD 39 the emperor Caligula rode a horse across a pontoon bridge of ships linking Baiae to Puteoli, according to Suetonius.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most remarkable archaeological sites in Campania?
- On our list, Pompeii ranks first, followed by Paestum and Herculaneum.
- What is the difference between Pompeii and Herculaneum?
- Both were destroyed by Vesuvius in AD 79, but Pompeii was buried mainly by falling ash and pumice, while Herculaneum was engulfed by pyroclastic flows that set into a deep, solid mass. That is why Herculaneum preserves organic material such as wood far better.
- Why is Baia underwater?
- Baia lies in the Campi Flegrei, a volcanic area where the ground slowly rises and sinks, a process called bradyseism. Over the centuries much of the Roman town sank below sea level.
- Who built the temples of Paestum?
- Greek colonists, who founded the city as Poseidonia around 600 BC. The three Doric temples date from the sixth and fifth centuries BC.
- How many archaeological sites are on this list in Campania?
- The list covers 5 archaeological sites.