Self guided tours Pompeii and Coliseum

I think you can enjoy the Colosseum, Forum, and Palatine Hill on your own using Rick Steves’ book or audio guide. He does a great job with these self tours.

While I have not done Pompeii without a guide, again I would turn to Mr. Steves’ books and audio tours. I did use his audio tour of Ostia Antica and it was very enjoyable.

For both sites, go early! You’ll want to be wrapping up before the heat of the day hits, even in June.

This is a link to the Pompeii website page - the title is in the link "map and guide to the excavations"
The map is of the entire site, with each house numbered (by its region)
The booklet / pamphlet (in PDF format) that comprises the guide is over 140 very short pages. I had Adobe Acrobat print it out with three pages to a sheet of paper and I read all of the pages a few times.
We were there this April/May and the crowd at a brothel was bad enough that we just skipped it. We were still busy there for six (or more) hours :-)

http://pompeiisites.org/en/visiting-info/map-and-guide-to-the-excavations/

There are guided tours at Pompeii where you buy tickets. They are not that expensive. Personally, I found the information critical to enjoying the site. It was a couple hours long and then we wandered around for another couple hours (it was July so hot).
Of course, you can do it in your own but is more work.

Tom- Take a look at Mondo Guides
www.sharedtours.com
We did the Pompeii tour with them and were very pleased. It's 15€ plus the 15€ entrance fee. Our guide was fantastic. The site is huge and could be confusing on your own. Our guide made the place come alive, she knew the traffic patterns of other visitors and was able to steer us around and avoid the crowding. There are also any given areas closed from time to time for excavations, etc and the guides will know where those areas are.
We thought it was money well spent. Tour was a bit over 2 hours then we were free to explore on our own with further direction given by the guide.

We did do a Walks of Italy tour of Colosseum on our first visit- it was very good, but a bit pricey I guess. I think you could get by just as well with RS audioguide.

As long as you pick a reasonably current book, with a specific "Walking Tour" or the like included, you should be fine. The point I'm making is that you don't want to spend the time studying a historical essay, but want to hit the ground running with INSTRUCTIONS for the walk.

I will say that things change. Although I had the most current Rick Steves Italy, crowds (in general, not referring to our week of travel) had already resulted in "street" closures in Pompeii, that made following exactly Rick's guide, impossible. We wasted 10-15 minutes, and some hot, sunny walking time, getting back on track. The specific issue was new site-management schemes to corral all Brothel visitors into a single approach, so that there would be a Disney-style SINGLE entrance to the long entry LINE, and a SINGLE exit from the Brothel.

While I find organized tours to be an annoying intrusion on my visits anywhere, I don't see how the tour leader's confident elbowing of people who don't pay him, to "spare" his patrons from the crowds, is actually that effective.

We used Rick Steves audioguide for Pompeii and Roman Forum. Were both excellent. (We did four guided tours while in Italy, but did not at all need them for Pompeii nor the Roman Forum.)

We went in August, and arrived at Pompeii just after it opened at 9am. At that time there was barely a wait to get in.

I don't see how the tour leader's confident elbowing of people who
don't pay him, to "spare" his patrons from the crowds, is actually
that effective.

Tim- I am not sure if this comment is in reference to what I posted about our guide steering us away from crowds or not but she certainly was not elbowing anyone out of our way. She knew where the bottlenecks formed, what areas were closed, where the biggest crowds would be and simply took us on alternate routes.
It was pouring down rain on our visit so having a guide who knew the site and how best to get around was extremely helpful that day. There were just 8 of us in the group.

Christine, my comments about guides were not addressed to anything you have ever said on this forum. They were based in my daily museum experiences in New York City, and like most posts here, contain some personal opinions.

Thanks Tim