Instead of Pompeii: the archaeological sites of the South that no one crowds
The best alternative to Pompeii? Greek temples, Phoenician cities and rock-cut tombs across southern Italy to visit with no queues or tour buses.
Foto: simada2009 (CC BY 4.0) — Flickr
Pompeii welcomes over three million visitors a year, and in high season walking along Via dell'Abbondanza means moving at the pace of a procession. Yet southern Italy is scattered with Greek cities, Samnite sanctuaries, Roman mosaics and Phoenician necropolises where the custodian often greets you by name because you're the only person to have turned up that morning. If you're after a true alternative to Pompeii among the archaeological sites, here you'll find ruins every bit as eloquent, but without the wall of people in front of every fresco.
Beneath Naples
We start with Naples itself, just a few kilometres from the Vesuvian excavations. In the heart of the Rione Sanità you descend eleven metres underground to reach the Ipogeo dei Cristallini, four Greek tombs dug into the tuff between the fourth and third centuries BC. Reopened to the public in 2022, it preserves extremely rare wall paintings: a head of Medusa, Dionysus and Ariadne, funerary klinai-shaped beds with sculpted and painted cushions. It's the Greek Neapolis surviving beneath the city, in groups of eight people at a time.
Magna Graecia
Moving over to the Ionian coast you enter Magna Graecia proper. In the Lucanian countryside, isolated in the middle of the fields, stands the temple of Hera that everyone calls the Tavole Palatine of Metaponto: of the original thirty-two Doric columns, fifteen remain, standing since the sixth century BC. Further south, on the promontory of Crotone, the lone column of Capo Colonna is all that remains of the great sanctuary of Hera Lacinia: a single column facing the sea, where the Greeks of the whole region once gathered. A short distance away, Bova, capital of the Greek-speaking area, shows how that Hellenic world never entirely vanished: here they still speak the Greek of Calabria.
Apulia offers two complementary stops. Along the Adriatic, between Bari and Brindisi, Egnazia layers Messapians, Romans and Byzantines in a park sheer above the sea, with the Via Traiana running through it and a museum that explains the "Gnathia" pottery. At Otranto, meanwhile, archaeology becomes storytelling: the floor mosaic of the cathedral, the Tree of Life signed by the monk Pantaleone in the twelfth century, spreads across the whole nave a medieval bestiary that mixes the Bible, pagan myths and King Arthur.
Islands and forgotten sites
Sicily, paradoxically, is the most crowded region and at the same time the richest in forgotten sites. Above Syracuse, the Castle of Euryalus is the most imposing work of Greek military engineering to have come down to us: moats, tunnels and walkways commissioned by Dionysius I to defend the city, with almost no one walking them. In the Stagnone lagoon, reachable by boat, Mozia preserves an entire Phoenician city on an island, with the famous marble Youth and the salt pans all around. Above Cefalù, a steep climb leads to the so-called Temple of Diana and the megalithic walls of the Rocca, Cyclopean blocks that predate the Greeks. And at Patti, on the Tyrrhenian coast, the Roman villa of Patti Marina preserves late-antique mosaic floors right beneath the motorway viaduct: a contrast that alone is worth the trip.
Sardinia rounds off the picture with two gems. On the Sinis peninsula, Tharros lines up Roman columns and baths on a wind-battered isthmus, a Phoenician then Punic and Roman city that the sea is slowly reclaiming. In the Sulcis, the Domus de Janas of Montessu are a prehistoric necropolis carved into a natural amphitheatre of rock, with engravings and bull's-head protomes five thousand years old.
Heading back up towards inland Abruzzo, finally, the Italic temple of Schiavi d'Abruzzo reminds us that before Rome there were the Samnites: two temples overlooking the Trigno valley, in total mountain silence. If you want to widen the tour, it's also worth seeking out Velia (the ancient Elea of Parmenides) in the Cilento, Roman Grumentum in the Val d'Agri and Saepinum in Molise, an entire, free town among the olive trees.
Practical advice
To build a complete itinerary, our guide to Italy's little-known archaeological sites gathers more stops region by region. One practical tip: many of these places are outdoors and without shade, so it's best to plan them for spring or autumn, when the heat is kind and your only company, often, is that of the stones.
Practical guides for Napoli
Practical info
When is the best time to visit Instead of Pompeii?
The recommended time is April, May and October, when it is less crowded.
Where is Instead of Pompeii?
Instead of Pompeii is located in Italy.
