Paestum is the trip most visitors to Naples skip, and the only one where you see three Doric temples still standing, colonnades complete and entablatures in place. It costs €30.20 per person: €15.20 for the regional train return and €15 for the ticket from March to November, according to parchipaestumvelia.cultura.gov.it. The skip-the-line guided tour on the platforms starts at €39.50.
The thing to accept straight away: Paestum needs a whole day. The regional train from Napoli Centrale takes between 1h14 and 1h22 each way, the archaeological area covers roughly 27 hectares and the museum deserves an hour and a half of it. Nine hours door to door. If you have five, the right trip is Herculaneum, not this one.
The day, hour by hour
Napoli Centrale: regional ticket NA10 €7.60, direction Sapri or Reggio
Departure; the regional train reaches Paestum at 8:49
Porta Principale entrance, where one of the Parco’s two ticket offices is
Southern sanctuary: Temple of Neptune and the so-called Basilica, the two big colonnades
Greek agora, ekklesiasterion, Heroon and the Roman forum with its tabernae
Northern sanctuary: Temple of Athena, the oldest of the three
Museo Archeologico Nazionale: Tomb of the Diver and the metopes from the Heraion at the Sele
Lunch outside the site: dairies and trattorie along via Magna Grecia
The walls: the stretch between Porta Sirena and Porta Giustizia, the one genuinely shaded circuit
Regional train to Naples: at Centrale by 16:43
How to get to Paestum from Naples
You travel by regional train from Napoli Centrale, direction Sapri, Reggio Calabria or Battipaglia-Paestum: the stop is called Paestum and there are about ten direct services a day. The ticket is the Unico Campania NA10 at €7.60 each way.
The useful morning departures: 06:45 (arriving 08:04), 07:35 (08:49), 07:50 (09:04), 08:45 (10:02), then a gap until midday. There is also an InterCity at 11:40 that arrives at 12:45 in a little over an hour, but it costs €9.90 and loses you the morning.
Coming back from Paestum: 15:25 (in Naples at 16:43), 16:21 (17:43), 17:56 (19:13), 18:44 (20:05). Services are nothing like as frequent as on the Circumvesuviana: note both your train home and the one after it, because the margin for error here is an hour, not ten minutes.
Watch the stop names on the board: Capaccio is the municipality, Paestum is the station for the archaeological area, and the timetable holds other stops with “Paestum” in the name that serve the coastal strip. Get off at Paestum, plain and simple.
By car it is a little over a hundred kilometres, leaving the A3 at Battipaglia, with paid parking along via Magna Grecia. The train stays the sensible choice: the archaeological area is walked end to end, and a car is only an extra cost. Fares for every regional connection are in getting around.
From the station to the entrance
You leave Paestum station and take via Magna Grecia, the road the Parco fronts at number 919: about a quarter of an hour on foot, a little over a kilometre, flat all the way, with no climb and no shuttle to catch. The Parco does not publish the distance, but there is only one road and it has no gradient. This is one of the few trips from Naples with no second connection to slot in after the train.
Once you are inside, nothing else is needed to get about: archaeological area, museum and walls all sit within a few minutes on foot, and the Porta Cerere entrance lets you come back in without walking all the way round to Porta Principale.
What the day costs
By public transport
- Regional train Napoli Centrale–Paestum, returntrenitalia.com
- €15.20 · 1h14–1h22 each way
- Parchi di Paestum e Velia ticketparchipaestumvelia.cultura.gov.it
- €15 March to November · €10 December to February
- Lunch nearby, mozzarella included
- €15–25 a head
- Total per person
- €30.20 without lunch · 9 hours door to door
The skip-the-line guided tour on the platforms starts at €39.50: on top of the €15 official ticket you are paying for two hours with a guide, and that counts for more here than elsewhere because the Parchi run no guided visits of their own and the signs say little.
What you see at Paestum and how long it takes
The archaeological area tells the story of Poseidonia, a colony founded by the Greeks of Sybaris, later a Lucanian town and finally a Roman one. You read the three phases as you walk, and that is what sets it apart from Pompeii: not one frozen instant but a stratification.
Southern sanctuary, 60 minutes. You come in at Porta Principale, where one of the two ticket offices stands, and reach the two big colonnades immediately: the Temple of Neptune, the best preserved, and the so-called Basilica, which was in fact dedicated to Hera. Between them stands Mimmo Paladino’s Il Cavallo di Sabbia, a contemporary work installed in the space between the colonnades: it divides opinion and is worth the pause.
Civic centre, 60 minutes. The Greek agora with the ekklesiasterion, where the assembly met, and the Heroon, the founder’s shrine; above them the Roman forum with its tabernae, the pool and the amphitheatre cut in two by the modern road. This is the part that needs a guide or an audio guide: without an explanation they are low walls.
Northern sanctuary, 45 minutes. The Temple of Athena, oldest of the three and the only one on rising ground: from here the view lines up the other two. It is also the least visited corner of the park.
Museo Archeologico Nazionale, 90 minutes. This is where the Tomb of the Diver is, five slabs painted with the banquet and the dive into the water: one of the very few cycles of Greek painting to have reached us. Alongside it, the metopes from the Heraion at the Sele and the material from the sanctuaries. The museum closes later than the archaeological area — last entry 19:00 against 18:30 at the ticket office — so keep it for the afternoon rather than the morning.
Walls, 45 minutes. The defensive circuit is almost complete: the stretch between Porta Sirena and Porta Giustizia is shaded and empty, and the Porta Cerere gate can be used both on the way in, ticket already in hand, and on the way out.
Paestum, Pompeii, Herculaneum: what changes
The three archaeological trips from Naples are not substitutes for one another, and lining them up helps you decide which to do if there is time for only one.
| Paestum | Pompeii | Herculaneum | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Civilisation | Greek, then Lucanian and Roman | Roman | Roman |
| Journey from Naples | 1h14–1h22, €7.60 | 35–40 min, €3.30 | 20 min, €2.60 |
| Full ticket | €15 (€10 in winter) | €20 | €16 |
| Ticket validity | 3 days, includes Velia and museum | One day, named | One day |
| Hours to allow | 9 door to door | 6 door to door | 4 door to door |
| What stays with you | Whole colonnades, Greek painting | The scale of a living city | Wood, upper floors, the fugitives |
| Shade and heat | Almost no shade | Little shade | A sunken dig, slightly cooler |
Paestum wins on one thing the other two cannot offer: the temples are standing. At Pompeii and Herculaneum you read walls and imagine the elevation; here the colonnade of the Temple of Neptune is complete and you see the building, not the plan. In exchange it asks for the longest journey and a ticket covering two parks, which only makes sense if you use the validity.
Who should pick what
Tickets, hours and the three-day rule
Official information · Parco Archeologico di Paestum
- Address
- Via Magna Grecia 919, 84047 Capaccio Paestum (SA); two ticket offices, main entrance at Porta Principale
- Opening hours
- 8:30–19:30 in the long season, ticket office and last entry 18:30, last museum entry 19:00; in autumn and winter closing is earlier
- Official price
- €15 March to November, €10 December to February, €2 for those aged 18 to 24, free under 18; valid 3 days for Paestum, Velia and the museum; annual pass €30
- Closed
- 25 December and 1 January. Free on the first Sunday of the month and on 25 April, 2 June, 4 November
- Official site
- parchipaestumvelia.cultura.gov.it
From the official website: double-check before you go.
The cleverest thing about this ticket is that it lasts three days and covers Paestum, Velia and the museum on one purchase. If you are staying on in the Cilento, or passing back this way within seventy-two hours, you buy nothing again. Regulars take the annual pass at €30.
No time bands, no compulsory booking: the official online ticket office is on Vivaticket, but the Parco’s two physical ticket offices work fine and out of season there is no queue. The free days are the first Sunday of each month plus 25 April, 2 June and 4 November.
Parco rules worth knowing in advance: flat shoes recommended, no eating or drinking inside the site, no bulky rucksacks or bags, and under-12s must be accompanied. Lunch happens outside, which is good news.
The museum and archaeological area of the Heraion on the river Sele can only be visited with a compulsory booking by email, on Saturday at 11 and Sunday at 17, with extra slots on the first Sunday of the month: they are covered by the ticket, but the pass has to be collected beforehand at the Parchi ticket offices.
One important point about guides: the Parchi run no guided visits of their own. Whoever shows you round is always an outside professional — a guide licensed by the Regione Campania, or the services concessionaire — so a guided tour has to be booked ahead, not looked for at the ticket office. The exact meeting point is on your voucher.
Same product, platforms compared
Prices refreshed from the GetYourGuide, Tiqets and Headout feeds.
| Platform | Price | Rating | Duration | Cancellation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TiqetsPaestum Archaeological Park: Skip The Line Ticket + Guided Tour | €39.50 | ★ 4.9 (114) | 02:00 | — | Book on Tiqets |
Partner supply on Paestum is thin: a single platform sells a real product, a skip-the-line ticket with a two-hour guided tour from €39.50, rated very highly on a still small sample. Partner prices are checked regularly. There are no packages with a transfer from Naples: anyone who will not take the train reaches Paestum only inside an Amalfi Coast circuit or with a private driver.
Mozzarella, Velia and how to build the day
The Sele plain around Paestum is the home ground of Campania’s buffalo mozzarella: the dairies stand along via Magna Grecia and the roads towards Capaccio, many with a counter and tables. That is why this trip is organised around lunch rather than around a snack: at 13:30 you come out of the museum, eat five minutes away on foot and by 14:40 you are back on the walls. Anyone travelling with children will appreciate that here, unlike at Pompeii, lunch is not a logistical problem: outside the fence there are real tables and shade.
The second park, Velia, is covered by the same ticket: the acropolis, the Greek quarter and Porta Rosa, the oldest true arch in Italy. On some weekends in season the Parco lays on a free shuttle between the two sites, out at 15:00 and back at 18:30: the shuttle ticket is collected at the ticket office along with your entry ticket. With that you close a double day and come home on the 18:44 regional train.
Do-it-yourself variant
Regional train from Napoli Centrale, at Paestum by 8:49
Paestum archaeological area: temples, agora and walls in three and a half hours
Museum, then collect the shuttle ticket at the ticket office along with your entry ticket
Free Paestum–Velia shuttle: same ticket, nothing more to pay
Velia: the acropolis and Porta Rosa, the oldest Greek arch in Italy
Return shuttle Velia–Paestum
Last useful regional train to Naples: at Centrale by 20:05
The other way of getting here without a train is inside a tour of the south: some operators slot Paestum into a circuit that also takes in the coast, but time at the temples shrinks to an hour. If the temples are the priority, take the regional train; if it is the scenery, look instead at the Amalfi Coast in a day and leave Paestum for another trip.
On timing: from June to August the archaeological area has no shade and the middle hours are punishing, while in April, May, September and October the grass is green and the light on the colonnades is the light in the photographs. The right month for each trip is compared in when to visit.
In two lines
Paestum is not an alternative to Pompeii: it is the other half of the story, the Greek half, and it has to be taken on with a whole day and the 7:35 train. It costs €30.20 per person, the ticket lasts three days and covers Velia, booking is unnecessary, and the only things that can ruin it are July heat and an unchecked time for the train home. If you want a guide, book ahead: the Parco supplies none. The other ten day trips, with times, budgets and verdicts side by side, are in the day trips table.
Questions people ask
How much does it cost to go to Paestum from Naples?
€15.20 for the regional train return plus €15 for the ticket from March to November: €30.20 per person. From December to February the ticket drops to €10.
How long is the train from Naples to Paestum?
The direct regional trains from Napoli Centrale take between 1h14 and 1h22, with about ten services a day. The stop is called Paestum.
Can you do Paestum in half a day?
No. Between the journey, the archaeological area and the museum you need nine hours door to door. With half a day the right choice is Herculaneum.
Does the Paestum ticket include the museum?
Yes, and it also covers the archaeological area of Velia: a single ticket valid for three days for Paestum, Velia and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Paestum.
Do you need to book a visit to Paestum?
No, booking is not compulsory and there are no time slots. The official online ticket office is on Vivaticket; there are two physical ticket offices inside the Parco.
Where is the Tomb of the Diver?
In the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Paestum, inside the Parco’s perimeter. Those five painted slabs are the reason to keep an hour and a half for the museum.
How do you get from Paestum to Velia?
On some weekends in season the free Paestum & Velia on the road shuttle runs: out at 15:00, back at 18:30, with a shuttle ticket to be collected at the ticket office along with your entry ticket.
What shoes do you need at Paestum?
Flat, closed shoes, as the Parco’s rules recommend: you walk on gravel, grass and uneven ancient paving across some 27 hectares. Food and drink are banned inside the site, as are bulky rucksacks.
Official sources
Read next
- Day tripsEvery day trip from Naples compared: how long it takes, how you get there, what it costs on your own and with a tour. Pick one in two minutes.
- PompeiiPompeii from Naples: €26.60 on your own or a tour from €45.50. Train, time bands, named ticket and the hour-by-hour plan. Check availability.
- HerculaneumHerculaneum in half a day: 20-minute train, €16 ticket, 4 hours door to door. The table for choosing Pompeii or Herculaneum, and the tours worth it.
- Amalfi CoastMinivan, boat, ferry or train plus bus: what an Amalfi Coast day trip from Naples really costs, with verified timetables and tours compared.
- Getting aroundMetro, Circumvesuviana, ferries, Alibus and high-speed rail: lines, stations, minutes, fares and last useful services. Check tickets and transfers.
- When to goWhen to visit Naples and do the day trips: a month-by-month table with sea, seasonal ferries, crater hours, crowds and events. Pick the right time.