Naples is Italy's most chaotic major city and also, arguably, its most alive, narrow lanes hung with washing lines, street shrines on every corner, and a food culture that produced pizza and refuses to apologise for the mess. It also sits directly beneath Vesuvius, close enough that Pompeii, buried by the same volcano nearly two thousand years ago, is a straightforward day trip.
Old Naples
Spaccanapoli, the arrow-straight street that splits the old town in two, follows the original Roman-era grid and passes some of the city's best-loved churches, street food stalls, and the presepe workshops of Via San Gregorio Armeno, where artisans build elaborate nativity scenes year-round.
Naples Underground tours descend into the Greco-Roman aqueducts and cisterns beneath the modern city, later used as bomb shelters during the Second World War, a genuinely different perspective on a city that's stacked its history in layers going straight down.
Pizza and Pompeii
Pizza was invented here, and the debate over the best Neapolitan pizzeria (L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele and Sorbillo are the perennial contenders) is taken with total seriousness by locals. Expect a wait at either, and a menu that's deliberately, almost defiantly, short.
Pompeii, forty minutes by train, is one of the most significant archaeological sites in the world, an entire Roman city preserved in volcanic ash, frozen mid-day in 79 AD. Go early to beat both the heat and the tour groups, and hire a guide if possible; the site is enormous and easy to under-explore without one.
Recommended Stay · Naples · Santa Lucia
Grand Hotel Vesuvio
A historic seafront hotel with direct views of Mount Vesuvius across the bay, and a rooftop restaurant that has hosted a long list of past guests from Oscar Wilde to modern heads of state.
