Italy
Naples
Italy's rawest great city - the best cheap eating in the country, with the Roman world's finest ruins on its doorstep.
Naples is the oldest and least polished of Italy's great cities, and by some distance the most alive: a Greek street grid still crammed with churches, workshops and street kitchens, with hollowed-out quarries and Roman aqueducts running directly beneath it. It sits on a wide bay under Vesuvius, and Pompeii, the best-preserved Roman town anywhere, is a short commuter train along the coast. Almost nothing here has been buffed up for visitors, which is exactly why people fall for it.
Suggested stay
3–5 days
Language
Italian
Currency
EUR
Timezone
UTC+2
Why you'll love Naples
Food the city that invented pizza, and behind it a whole cuisine of fried snacks, cream-filled pastries and long-simmered Sunday sauces, still priced for the people who live here
Layers a Greek street plan at the surface, quarries and aqueducts cut out of the rock below it, and major Baroque paintings still hanging in working parish churches
The bay a live volcano across the water, islands on the horizon and a long car-free seafront to walk at dusk
The ruins two of the best-preserved Roman towns in the world sit within a commuter train ride of the old centre
Best time to visit
Mar-Jun, Sep-Oct
Mild spring · 16-28° days
40.836° N, 14.249° E
UTC+2 · Europe/Rome
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Weather & when to go to Naples
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Mar-Jun, Sep-Oct
Conditions Jan Mild & wet · Feb Mild · Mar Mild spring · Apr Pleasant · May-Jun Warm · Jul-Aug Hot · Sep Warm, sea warm · Oct Mild autumn · Nov-Dec Mild & wet
Cards tinted by verified verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Naples
No bad season here - Naples runs year-round and the only real dip is high summer, when the heat sits in the airless old lanes and a good number of family-run kitchens shut up for a stretch in August. Winter is mild but it is the wet half of the year, so the pinch is rain rather than cold, and spring and early autumn are the sweet spots.
Top things to do in Naples
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Museo Archeologico Nazionale - everything Pompeii gave up
history culture arts 👍 PopularThe frescoes, bronzes and mosaics stripped out of Pompeii and Herculaneum ended up here rather than on site, which makes this the room where the buried cities actually come alive: the Alexander Mosaic from the House of the Faun, a whole hall of Roman bronzes, the colossal Farnese Hercules and Farnese Bull, and the locked-away erotic cabinet the Bourbons kept from public view. Go before the ruins, not after.
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Spaccanapoli and Via dei Tribunali - walk the Greek grid
history food 👍 PopularThe two arrow-straight lanes slicing through the old centre are Greek streets that never moved, and walking them end to end is the single best thing you can do here: baroque church fronts, laundry four storeys up, fried-pizza counters, shrines set into walls, and side alleys that open into cloisters. Do it once in the morning and once after dark, when it turns into an outdoor room.
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Pizza napoletana - eat it where it was invented
food 👍 PopularA soft, blistered, wet-centred disc that folds into quarters, out of a wood oven in under two minutes, and the only two that matter are the marinara and the margherita. Around it sits the rest of the canon: pizza fritta folded and deep-fried, cuoppi of fried seafood in paper cones, sfogliatella pastry, rum-soaked baba, pasta alla genovese and a slow Sunday ragu.
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Cappella Sansevero - Sanmartino's Veiled Christ
culture arts history ⭐ Highly recommendedA small private chapel holding a marble Christ under a shroud so convincingly carved that people long refused to believe it was stone, surrounded by allegorical figures under marble veils and nets. The alchemist prince who commissioned it left two anatomical models with intact circulatory systems in the crypt below, which nobody has fully explained. Entry is timed and it sells out.
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Certosa e Museo di San Martino - the balcony over the bay
culture arts scenic ⭐ Highly recommendedA Carthusian monastery on the Vomero ridge that turned into the city's own museum: a hallucinatory baroque church, a serene marble cloister, the finest collection of Neapolitan nativity scenes anywhere, and terraces that give you the whole bay with the volcano behind it. The star-shaped fortress next door climbs a little higher for a full circle view.
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Napoli Sotterranea - the city under the city
history adventureGreek quarrymen cut the tufa blocks for the streets above from here, the Romans turned the voids into aqueduct cisterns, and Neapolitans sheltered in them through the bombing of the 1940s. Tours go down a long stair by candle and squeeze through passages narrow enough to matter if you are broad or claustrophobic.
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Duomo di San Gennaro - the cathedral and the blood
history culture artsThe cathedral guards two sealed ampoules of the patron saint's dried blood, brought out three times a year before a packed nave to see whether it liquefies; the city reads the result as an omen. The silver-crammed treasure chapel beside it is the real spectacle, and an early Christian basilica and a Greek and Roman excavation sit under the same roof.
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Pio Monte della Misericordia - Caravaggio's Seven Works of Mercy
culture artsOne of Caravaggio's greatest paintings still hangs over the altar of the charity that commissioned it, in the church it was painted for, a few steps off the main lane. Seven acts of mercy compressed into one crowded, half-lit Neapolitan street scene - and a balcony upstairs lets you look at it at eye level.
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Museo di Capodimonte - the Farnese pictures in a royal park
culture artsThe Bourbon hunting palace on the hill north of the centre holds one of Italy's heaviest picture collections - Titian, Masaccio, Bruegel's blind men stumbling into a ditch, a late Caravaggio flagellation - inside a huge public park that Neapolitans use as their back garden. Quiet on a day when the centre is not.
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Catacombe di San Gennaro - early Christian Naples
history off beaten pathTwo levels of rock-cut burial galleries under the Sanita hill, with frescoes and mosaics from the earliest Christian centuries and the crypt that held the patron saint's bones. They are run by a cooperative of young people from the neighbourhood, and the guided walk down through the district to reach them is half the experience.
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Castel dell'Ovo and the Lungomare - the seafront walk
scenicThe blunt sea castle sits on the islet where Greek settlers first landed, with a tiny harbour of fishing boats and restaurants tucked under its walls and a rampart walk that looks straight back at the city stacked up the hill. The promenade running west from it is closed to cars and is where the whole city walks in the evening.
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Via San Gregorio Armeno - the nativity workshops
shopping culture artsOne narrow lane of workshops that make presepe figures all year: shepherds and butchers' stalls in terracotta, cork landscapes, running water and working lights, plus the local tradition of sculpting the year's politicians and footballers into miniature. Impassable in December, browsable most other months.
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Toledo station and the art stations - ride the metro to look at it
culture artsLine 1's stations were handed to artists and architects, and one of them drops a blue mosaic light shaft the full depth of the station, with the escalators running up through it. Several others on the same line are worth the stop, which makes a metro ride the cheapest gallery in the city.
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Piazza del Plebiscito and the royal quarter - the other Naples
history culture artsThe colonnaded square, the royal palace facing it, the glass-domed shopping arcade opposite and the opera house next door were all built to impress, and they still do: this is the Bourbon capital that ran a third of Italy, and the opera house is the oldest in Europe still putting on shows.
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Quartieri Spagnoli - the Maradona shrine
culture arts off beaten pathA steep grid of narrow lanes laid out for a Spanish garrison, now half-covered in blue-and-white murals to the Argentine who won the city its first league titles, with an unofficial shrine in a small courtyard that people queue to photograph. Busy with visitors by day and a straight lesson in how completely this city runs on football.
Best areas to stay in Naples
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Centro Storico (Spaccanapoli & the Decumani)
First-time visitors $$Greek grid, nonstop street life
Explore hotels in Centro Storico (Spaccanapoli & the Decumani) →
Chiaia
Calm & upscale $$$Elegant, leafy, boutiques and aperitivo
Explore hotels in Chiaia →
Vomero
Quiet & residential $$Hilltop residential with the best views
Explore hotels in Vomero →
Santa Lucia & the Lungomare
Bay views $$$Seafront hotels facing the bay
Explore hotels in Santa Lucia & the Lungomare →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Naples
Getting to & around Naples
Getting there
Fly into Naples Capodichino (NAP) and take the Alibus shuttle into the centre, or arrive by high-speed train at Napoli Centrale
Flight
Naples International Airport (Capodichino) (NAP)
About 7 km northeast of the centre, one of the closest big airports to its own city in Italy. The Alibus shuttle runs from outside arrivals to Piazza Garibaldi beside the central station and on to the passenger port at Molo Beverello, taking roughly 20-30 min depending on traffic. Taxis cover the same ground in about 20 min and run on set flat rates between the airport, the station, the port and the main districts, so name your destination and confirm which rate applies before you set off.
Train
Napoli Centrale (Piazza Garibaldi)
High-speed Frecciarossa and Italo services reach Rome in about 1 hr 10, Florence in about 3 hr and Milan in about 4 hr 30, arriving in the middle of the city with metro lines directly under the concourse; the blocks immediately around the station are scruffy and not somewhere to linger late at night
Ferry
Molo Beverello & Calata Porta di Massa
Hydrofoils and car ferries run all year from the passenger port to Capri, Ischia, Procida and Sorrento, with far more sailings in summer, plus overnight crossings to Sicily
Cruise
Stazione Marittima
Ships tie up at the terminal on Piazza Municipio, which puts the castle, the royal quarter and the edge of the old centre within a walk of the gangway
Coach
Metropark, beside Napoli Centrale
Long-distance and international buses use the terminal next to the central station, and they are the cheapest way in from Rome and from the south
Drive
The A1 from Rome runs straight in and the coastal motorway heads south past the volcano, but this is the last Italian city you want to drive in: dense aggressive traffic, a camera-enforced limited traffic zone over the centre and very little parking. Leave the car outside and use the trains
Getting around
Walking
The old centre is compact and best on foot, but many lanes have little or no pavement and scooters use every gap, so walk as though you are in the traffic, because you are
Free
Metro
Line 1 curls from the old centre up to Vomero and out to the suburbs, Line 2 runs west along the coast towards Pozzuoli, and several Line 1 stations are commissioned artworks in their own right
TBC
Funicular
Three funiculars climb from the centre to the Vomero ridge in a few minutes and a fourth runs up from Mergellina; they are ordinary commuter transport, not a tourist ride
TBC
Bus
City buses fill the gaps the metro leaves, including the climb to the hilltop palace and museum, and they crawl in traffic
TBC
Regional train
The narrow-gauge Circumvesuviana from Garibaldi is the workhorse for Herculaneum, Pompeii and Sorrento: crowded, dated and a well-known line for pickpockets, so keep your bag in front of you. The faster Campania Express covers the same route with reserved seats in season
TBC
Taxi
Ranks, phone bookings and apps rather than hailing; official cabs are white with the city crest, and set flat rates exist between the airport, station, port and main districts, so agree which one applies before moving
TBC
Ferry
Hydrofoils to the bay islands leave from the port right beside the old centre, which makes a day on the water easy to bolt onto a city stay
TBC
Day trips from Naples
Pompeii
Full dayBuried Roman city
A whole town stopped mid-morning in AD 79 and dug back out: paved streets with cart ruts, bakeries with the millstones still standing, painted dining rooms, a brothel, two theatres and the plaster casts of people caught by the ash. It is enormous, so pick a route rather than trying to see it all.
Getting there
train | tour | car
40 min by Circumvesuviana train to Pompei Scavi
Herculaneum
Half dayPreserved seaside town
Smaller than Pompeii and far better preserved, because it was sealed under hot mud rather than ash: upper floors still standing, carbonised wooden beds and doors, mosaics in situ, and the boat sheds by the old shoreline where hundreds sheltered and died. Half the walking, twice the detail.
Getting there
train | tour | car
20 min by Circumvesuviana train to Ercolano Scavi
Mount Vesuvius
Half dayVolcano crater walk
A shuttle takes you most of the way up and the last stretch is a steady zigzag on loose grey scree to the rim, where you can look down into a smoking crater and back over the whole bay. Entry runs on timed slots, the summit is colder and windier than the coast, and cloud can wipe the view out entirely.
Getting there
train | bus | tour | walk
1 hr by train and shuttle bus, then a 30 min walk up the cinder path
Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast
Full dayCliffside coast road
Sorrento sits on a cliff terrace facing the volcano and is the jumping-off point for the coast road south, a sequence of hairpins above vertical lemon terraces to Positano and Amalfi. The bus is packed and slow in season, so take the ferry when it is running and keep the road for the return.
Getting there
train | bus | ferry | tour | car
1 hr 10 to Sorrento by Circumvesuviana, then coast bus or seasonal ferry
Procida and Ischia
Full dayBay islands
Procida is tiny, unglamorous and painted in sherbet colours around a fishing harbour; Ischia is much bigger, green and volcanic, with thermal spa gardens and a castle on its own rock. Capri is the famous one and takes the crowds, so these two are where you go for a quieter day on the water.
Getting there
ferry
40 min to Procida, about 1 hr to Ischia by hydrofoil
Reggia di Caserta
Half dayRoyal palace and gardens
The Bourbons' answer to Versailles, on a scale that is hard to take in: over a thousand rooms behind one facade, a grand staircase built for arrivals, and a garden axis running three kilometres uphill through fountains to a cascade with an English landscape garden hidden beside it.
Getting there
train | car
40 min by regional train from Napoli Centrale, then a short walk
Campi Flegrei and Pozzuoli
Half dayVolcanic fields and ruins
The bay's other volcano is a whole caldera of low craters and steaming ground west of the city, with one of Italy's largest Roman amphitheatres and its intact underground machinery rooms, a Greek and Roman port town, and the imperial resort at Baia with villas now underwater.
Getting there
train | car
25 min on Metro Line 2 or the Cumana railway
A little history of Naples
Greek settlers from Cumae founded Neapolis, the new city, beside an older settlement called Parthenope around the fifth century BC, and their street grid is still the plan of the historic centre: the long straight decumani that visitors know as Spaccanapoli are Greek streets that were never rebuilt. Rome took over and turned the bay into its holiday coast, which is why Vesuvius buried whole resort towns in AD 79. After Rome fell, Naples spent centuries as a duchy under distant Byzantine authority before the Normans, the Angevins and then the Aragonese took it in turn; from 1266 it was the capital of a kingdom that covered the whole southern half of Italy.
Two centuries of Spanish viceroys made it one of the largest cities in Europe, dense, brilliant and desperately poor, until plague killed something close to half its people in 1656. The Bourbons arrived in 1734 and gave the city its palaces, its opera house and its museums, and it was their excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii that lit the fuse for neoclassicism and put Naples at the top of the Grand Tour. Unification in 1860 cost the city its capital status and began a long decline; it was the most heavily bombed Italian city of the Second World War and rose against the German occupation before the Allies arrived. The late twentieth century was hard - organised crime, earthquake damage, unemployment - and the last three decades have been a slow, uneven recovery in which the historic centre has become one of the best things in Italy to walk around.
Greeks from Cumae found Neapolis, the new city, whose grid still shapes the old centre
Vesuvius erupts, burying Pompeii and Herculaneum across the bay
Charles of Anjou takes the kingdom and makes Naples its capital
The kingdom passes to Spain and is run by viceroys for two centuries
Plague kills close to half the city's population
The Teatro San Carlo opens, and is still the oldest working opera house in Europe
Bourbon excavations begin at Pompeii, a decade after Herculaneum, and launch the Grand Tour
Garibaldi enters the city; Naples joins a united Italy and loses its status as a capital
Neapolitans rise against the German occupation in the Four Days of Naples
Maradona's Napoli win the club's first league title, and the city has never quite got over it
Know before you go
Payment
Cards & cash mixed
English
Widely spoken
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / F / L
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+39
Mobile network & SIM card
Get an eSIM before you fly
A Italy eSIM installs in minutes and works the moment you switch off flight mode. No SIM swap, no roaming bill.
FAQs about Naples
▸ When is the best time to visit Naples?
March to June and September to October are the pick: warm, bright and comfortable for both the city and the ruins, which have very little shade. July and August are hot and humid, the archaeological sites are punishing at midday, and many family-run places close for part of August. Winter is mild and atmospheric but it is the wettest stretch of the year.
▸ How many days do you need in Naples?
Three full days covers the historic centre, the archaeological museum, a hill for the view and enough eating to understand the place. Five lets you add Pompeii or Herculaneum, the volcano and a day on the water without rushing any of them.
▸ Is Naples safe?
The real risk is theft, not violence: bag and phone snatching, sometimes from a passing scooter, is a long-standing problem in crowded streets, on the Circumvesuviana line and around the central station, where the surrounding blocks are grubby and worth avoiding late at night. Organised crime exists but operates well away from visitors. Use a cross-body bag, keep your phone off the kerb side and out of sight, leave nothing in a parked car - and treat the traffic seriously, because scooters and crossings catch more travellers out than criminals do.
▸ Is Naples a good base for Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast?
Yes, and it is the obvious one. Herculaneum is twenty minutes out on the local line, Pompeii about forty, the volcano is a half day, and Sorrento at the end of the same line is the gateway to the coast road. You can also sail to the islands from the port beside the old centre, which is why many people never move hotels.
▸ Do you need a car in Naples?
No, and you actively do not want one. The centre is a limited traffic zone, parking is scarce and the driving is famously combative; trains, funiculars, the metro and ferries reach everything on a normal itinerary. Hire a car only for the far side of the region, and pick it up on the way out of town.
▸ Is Naples expensive?
It is one of the cheapest major cities in Italy and noticeably better value than Rome, Florence or Venice, especially for eating: a pizza, a coffee standing at the bar or a fried snack from a counter costs a fraction of what the northern cities charge. Hotels on the seafront and in Chiaia are the exception and are priced like anywhere else.
▸ What should you eat in Naples?
Pizza first, and specifically the marinara and margherita from a wood oven. Then the street food that surrounds it: pizza fritta, paper cones of fried seafood and vegetables, and rice balls. Sweets are a serious matter here - flaky sfogliatella, rum-soaked baba, ricotta pastries - and at the table look for pasta alla genovese, a slow onion and beef sauce, sausage with bitter friarielli greens, and buffalo mozzarella from the plain north of the city.
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