BERLIN, June 2026 — British bookings of archaeology tours – specifically led by an archaeologist are on the up, GetYourGuide data shows. As travelers seek out more immersive experiences with niche know-how, GetYourGuide is connecting them with the expert guides digging up the history.
Among those leading the dig is Pompeii archaeologist Raffaele Romano. A doctor in archaeology and lifelong local, Raffaele began guiding visitors around the UNESCO Heritage Site in 2016. Every guide he employs holds an academic background in the field, and the approach goes well beyond pointing at ruins.
Layer after layer of detail brings Pompeii's inhabitants startlingly close, from political slogans scrawled onto building walls to the Roman equivalent of cats' eyes for navigating roads after dark.
"What I tell people to remember is: Romans were not like us. We are like them," he said. "They came first."
As demand for expert-led experiences grows, Brits appear to have found their inner Indiana Jones: archaeologist-led bookings on GetYourGuide have grown 51% in two years, reflecting something broader. Travellers want to go beyond the surface.
“What we’re seeing at GetYourGuide is that travellers want to stay longer, go deeper, and actually understand what they're looking at,” said Francesca De Falco, GetYourGuide’s Regional Manager for Italy. “They’re swapping out their snapshots for more substance.”
“Italy has more UNESCO World Heritage Sites than any other country in the world, and most visitors have only ever encountered a fraction of what that actually means on the ground,” De Falco said. “A trained archaeologist closes that gap. They don't just add context. They change the entire experience of being somewhere. A broken column becomes a story. A pattern in the paving stones becomes evidence of how a whole neighbourhood once lived. On your own, you would miss so many hidden treasures.”
Many archaeologists like Raffaele are still actively excavating, which means their tours carry the kind of insight no information board can offer. Ground-breaking evidence emerged just months ago that some survivors of the 79 AD eruption returned to live in the upper storeys of the ruins.
Stranger still: carbonised excrement recovered from the drains of a nearby bakery contained pomegranate seeds, a fruit that ripens between October and November, confirming what archaeologists long suspected. The catastrophic eruption most likely happened in autumn, not August as was long believed.
Making sure visitors go home with a better understanding of the truth is at the heart of Raffaele’s tour. And that includes putting right what Hollywood and pop culture have got wrong over the years:
Raffaele’s Pompeii Pop Culture Myth-busting
- Pompeii wasn’t destroyed in a single blast
“Many people believe everything was over in minutes, like an atomic bomb. But none of that’s quite right,” Raffaele said. "It wasn’t instantaneous. The eruption happened in stages. And no lava ever reached Pompeii. It was completely ash and pyroclastic flows. If lava had touched the inside of the site, everything would have been destroyed," he said. - The haunting figures frozen mid-movement aren’t bodies
"Some think they’re frozen people, as if a magic touch from the explosion made them face one position. That’s not how it works." The figures are, in fact, plaster casts, created by archaeologists in the 1800s who discovered cavities in the compressed ash and filled them with liquid plaster. Today, archaeologists use foam. The impression is the same: a shape, sometimes with bones inside. But certainly not a stone person. - Pompeii pizza didn’t exist
A fresco discovered in 2023 sent culinary imaginations wild with it’s depiction of a flatbread-like dish covered in toppings, prompting rumors of a precursor to pizza. "It looks like a proper pizza,” Raffaele said. “But it was, in fact, a tray with different types of food on top of a piece of bread. It’s not what you order in Naples." While the origins of pizza can be traced back to ancient civilisations, the modern-day dish as we know it wasn’t recorded until the 1800s.
- Pompeii wasn’t just for the rich
Despite its reputation for luxurious baths and fancy villas, life in Pompeii wasn’t reserved for the Roman elite. In 79AD, volcanic ash preserved not just grand villas but rented rooms, graffiti scratched by laborers, and the modest homes of tradespeople. The bustling port city brought sailors and traders from across the Roman Empire, making the city multilingual. "We found graffiti in five different languages. People living together with different cultures without any problems," Raffaele said.
Press Contact
Raffele’s archaeology tour of Pompeii on GetYourGuide: https://www.getyourguide.com/pompei-campania-l156880/pompeii-vip-skip-the-line-with-your-archaeologist-t301893/?ranking_uuid=af01fa3a-71cf-4f5b-9155-b1e6b012fbb7
Photos available for download here.
About the data
- GetYourGuide booking data analysed performance across 2023, 2024 and 2025
- Bookings of GetYourGuide experiences with an archaeologist between 2023 and 2025 by consumers from the following countries:
- UK: +51%
- Germany: +48%
- France: +43%
- US: -19.8%
- Global: +12%
About GetYourGuide
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