Favorite Travel Guides for Pompeii

We just used one of the guides at the entrance and it worked well for us.

I'll second what Frank said - I was very pleased with the guide we met at the entrance.
There is guide recommended in Rick's book - but he is expensive and one time on an RS
tour we had him. Several people were "put off" my his demeanor ( but he is very very
knowledgeable and gives a dramatic presentation.)

Although I'm not a big fan of private guides, I'd comment that closures of villas for work, and the new "one-way" pedestrian streets around the brothel (for line-up purposes ... ) make all printed guidebooks, including Rick's, badly out-of-date. Your time (and aching feet) will be best used with a good guide, if you can find one. BTW, I was astonished to find the Villa of the Mysteries open, two weeks ago. This is so far off the beaten track that I might go there after the guide-time is finished. You can use the toilets and exit from that that end of the site, and walk back to the same train station on flat modern roads, instead of tricky Roman rock-streets-if you feel you've seen enough of Pompeii.

Tim - Silly question, I know, but did the map/brochure from the ticket office address any of these changes and detours?

Laura, note that I wasn't bad-mouthing Rick's "Naples and the Amalfi Coast", but only saying that a live human (the OP topic) is even more up-to-date than, say, a page on the internet. I was glad to have the book. We rarely, rarely hire guides.

I wasn't upset with Rick when we found the House of the Tragic Poet completely closed; These things happen. (You can make out the famous "cave canem" mosaic through the construction barrier, barely.) Rick was on target that the Casa dei Vetti is still ... eternally ... closed. But when we got to his (Self-Guided Tour) navigation italics at the end of item 14, we hit a completely closed street. And it took more than 1/4 mile of bumbling, and blind cul-de-sacs, to get to the brothel. One of the dead-ends we hit was the newly one-way (i.e. against us ... ) exit street from the exit doorway of the Lupanare (brothel.) It was an unusually frustrating and time-consuming bafflement, with a vast amount of fruitless walking.

Because it was raining for much of our day at Pompeii, I eventually threw away the damp map and booklet! But I certainly referred to the map when we got stuck at the barred-off road. So I'm going to say, in answer to your question, that I got no help from either official document. And the booklets (like any print-on-paper ... ) were not completely up-to-date on closed Villas-both at Pompeii and at Herculaneum.

I didn't actually do this research, but it may be better to see the Temple of Isis and the Theater first, and then backtrack, in order to approach the Lupanare without encountering blockages. The Taberna Hedones is now on a cul-de-sac. Or Rick's tour could finish at the tourist cafe, with the Theater in the middle, instead of at the end of the tour.