I’ve seen a lot of recommendations for Gaetano Manfredi for a tour guide of Pompeii, but I’m looking for other suggestions. I’ve read somewhere that he charges 200 euros for 2 hours and I’m just not willing to pay that no matter how great it is. So what have others done for guides? I hear there are people by the ticket booths, etc, but has anyone ever used them? Or other suggestions? We'll be there in 3 weeks.
We used Rick Steve’s’ recommended guides at mondoguides.com. They have very good reviews; we happened to get one of their not so good guides. We let Mondo know and they were very apologetic.
We used the Rick Steves guidebook’s Pompeii tour, along with the audio guide version downloaded off his Website (https://podcasts.ricksteves.com/walkingtours/Pompeii.mp3). Worked well, although there wasn’t an expert to which we could ask follow-up questions. Certainly cost less than €200!
I emailed Gaetano for a quote for transportation and a tour of Pompeii. It was 400 euros more that what the driver we hired wants to pick us up on the coast, wait at Pompeii and take us to Naples. That was an easy no for us. Maybe he is great but we'll go with the self-paced Rick Steves' audio tour and wander around by ourselves.
Why Pompeii? We did the adjacent Heraculeum which is smaller and similar but it still has the original mosaics and murals whereas Pompeii’s are in the Naples museum.