Naples
The one big Italian city that doesn't look tidied up for your benefit
- When to go
- October 19° · 9 rainy days
- Per day
- €€€price 3 of 5
- How many days
- 3–4days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Nearest airport
- 4 km Naples · 60 km Salerno
- Right now
The old centre of Naples still follows the Greek street grid laid out some 2,500 years ago, and the same suburban line runs to Herculaneum, 17–20 min out, and Pompeii, about 40 min. The city needs two days; the ruins and the islands another one or two.
Since November 2024 Pompeii tickets have carried your name and are checked against ID, with a cap of twenty thousand admissions a day. From mid-March to mid-October the ticket also carries a slot: fifteen thousand places until 1pm, five thousand after. The afternoon quota is a third of the morning's, so in season an after-lunch Pompeii is booked ahead, not bought at the gate.
The reputation of Naples has outlived the numbers that contradict it. In Il Sole 24 Ore's 2025 crime index, which counts reported offences per hundred thousand residents, Naples ranks thirteenth among Italian provinces; Milan is first. The airport taxi deserves more care: the fixed fare to the station, the port and the seafront hotels only applies if you ask for it before setting off. The Daily Telegraph named Toledo, on metro line 1, the most beautiful underground station in Europe.
Guides for Naples
Shorter, practical pages for one concrete question each — how many days, how much money, where to sleep, where to escape the city.
Naples in 2 days
→The old town and what lies under it on day one, Capodimonte and the shore on day two — and the ruins as a third day of…
Day trips from Naples
→Pompeii, Herculaneum, Vesuvius, Capri and the Amalfi coast — five trips from Naples, and only Herculaneum and Vesuvius…
Where to stay in Naples
→Centro storico puts everything within reach and never quite goes quiet, Chiaia is calmer and pricier, and near…
What Naples costs
→The ruins are the priciest item in a day, street food costs less than it looks, and the old town itself is seen without…
Naples off the main route: a chapel, a cloister, an arcade and a cemetery
→A Caravaggio in a chapel built by a brotherhood that ransomed prisoners, a cloister sheathed in majolica, a glass…
What to eat in Naples
→A pizza the rules recognise in two versions, a sfogliatella in two pastries and a ragù that simmers from morning — and…
The best time to visit Naples
→Summer heat pushes the plan toward Capri and Amalfi, and a rough sea after an autumn storm can shut both the hydrofoil…
Getting around Naples
→Capodichino is the only airport, a bus runs straight into the centre, and anyone heading uphill on the Montesanto…
Mistakes everyone makes in Naples
→The costliest mistakes in Naples happen before you even reach the ruins — at the wrong station, with the wrong ticket…
The neighbourhoods of Naples
→Rione Sanità holds bones and catacombs, the Quartieri Spagnoli a mural that became a shrine, and Vomero a view and a…
What to see in Naples
Pompeii and Herculaneum
Two towns buried by the same Vesuvius in AD 79. Pompeii is bigger and wants half a day; entry is €20. Herculaneum takes two hours and is better preserved: some twenty metres of scorching pyroclastic material buried it and carbonised the wood instead of burning it, so beams, doors and staircases are still in the houses. Entry is €16. Half a day is better spent at Herculaneum.
€20 / €16 · booking: recommended
The National Archaeological Museum
This is where the frescoes, mosaics and bronzes from Pompeii and Herculaneum ended up, along with the Alexander Mosaic, which makes the museum the second half of the excavations. Add the Farnese collection of ancient sculpture and the Gabinetto Segreto, a room of Roman erotica kept locked from 1821 to 2000, bar a brief spell in the late sixties. Entry is €20; closed Tuesdays.
€20 · closed Tuesday
Spaccanapoli and the city underneath
Spaccanapoli isn't one street but a run of them slicing the old town in a dead straight line along the Greek lower decumanus. Off it goes San Gregorio Armeno, the street of nativity-figure workshops. Beneath the old town, entered from Piazza San Gaetano, is Napoli Sotterranea: Greek quarries, a Roman aqueduct and Second World War shelters, down to forty metres below the street. Guided visits only.
€10 / €15 · booking: no (groups under ten)
Capodimonte
A royal palace in parkland above the city, holding the Farnese paintings, the Neapolitan school and Caravaggio's Flagellation of Christ. Entry is €15, closed Wednesdays; the Real Bosco park around it is free.
€15 · closed Wednesday
Pizza, and what it actually costs
The Neapolitan art of pizza-making went onto the UNESCO intangible heritage list in 2017. By the index of the Neapolitan pizza observatory, a margherita in Naples averages €6.70, against €7 across Italy. Pizza a portafoglio, folded into four and eaten walking, is the street version.
€6.70
- A
A base for Capri and the Amalfi Coast
The hydrofoil from Molo Beverello reaches Capri in about 50 min. The Amalfi Coast is reached overland: the Circumvesuviana to Sorrento, about 1 h 10 (train), then a bus along the coast.
€22–25 (one way) · closed in rough seas · booking: recommended in season
Stories from Naples
How it actually was when we were there, and what was worth it.
Pompeii and Herculaneum from Naples: what fits into one day
→All three sit half an hour by train from Naples, which is exactly why the day gets overloaded. Here is which two go together, and what…
Street food in Naples: pizza in hand, cuoppo, frittatina and sfogliatella
→In Naples the street itself is the table: pizza folded in four, a cone of hot fried things, a golden-crusted frittatina and a…
Three things you probably did not know
The veil on the Veiled Christ in the Sansevero Chapel is carved from the same block of marble as the body beneath it. For two centuries people believed Prince Raimondo di Sangro had somehow turned a real veil to stone, because there was no other explanation.
Forty metres below the city runs a system of tunnels: the Greeks quarried stone here, the Romans turned it into an aqueduct, and in the Second World War tens of thousands of people sheltered in it from the bombing.
West of the city lie the Phlegraean Fields, a caldera thirteen kilometres across where the ground rises and falls by metres. In Pozzuoli it rose almost two metres in two years in the early eighties and the town had to be evacuated. The volcano underfoot is larger than Vesuvius.
Ready for Naples?
Within reach from here
Places sorted by straight-line distance from Naples — day trips or weekends.
Italy
→The cities on the high-speed line are an hour or two apart; the coast, Matera and the Tuscan hills lie off it
France
→From Paris the TGV reaches Lyon, Bordeaux and Strasbourg in about two hours — France is chosen by direction, not by city
Spain
→A country where dinner is at ten and the city wakes up as everywhere else turns the lights off
All 277 places we write about sit on one page — narrow them down by continent, country, price or what you are travelling for.
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