Campania · Italy
The loudest, most alive city in Italy, with the best-preserved Roman town in the world twenty minutes down the line.
Photo: Commonists · CC BY-SA 4.0
In AD 79 Vesuvius buried two towns on its southern flank, and in doing so preserved more of Roman daily life than every other site in the empire combined. Pompeii is sixty-six hectares of streets, shops, bakeries with the millstones still in place, election graffiti on the walls, a brothel with a price list, and wheel ruts worn into the paving. Herculaneum, smaller and buried differently, kept things Pompeii lost: wooden roof beams, a bed frame, doors, and upper storeys still standing. Between them they are the reason the ancient world feels like a place rather than a subject.
The city that governs them is a shock to anyone arriving from Florence or Venice. Naples is dense, loud, poor in parts and extraordinarily alive — a Greek foundation whose street grid you can still trace, layered with Angevin castles, Spanish viceregal palaces and some of the most theatrical Baroque in Europe. Its historic centre is a UNESCO site. Its archaeological museum holds the Farnese marbles and everything portable that came out of Pompeii, including the Alexander Mosaic. Underneath the streets are Greek quarries turned into a Roman aqueduct turned into air-raid shelters.
And it invented pizza, which is not a throwaway line: the Neapolitan pizzaiolo's craft is on UNESCO's intangible heritage list, the dough is regulated, and a margherita at a hundred-year-old pizzeria costs about six euros. Naples is the best-value major city in Italy by a wide margin, and it is the point where the classic Italian trip stops being polished and starts being interesting.
Why visit
Two of the greatest archaeological sites in the world, the museum that explains them, and a city that is nothing like the rest of Italy.
You walk its streets, step on its crossing stones, look into its shops and houses and read what people scratched on the walls. Nothing else in the Roman world survives at this scale.
Buried by hot surges rather than ash-fall, it kept carbonised wood — doors, beds, roof beams — and standing upper floors. Smaller, quieter and in several ways more affecting.
The frescoes, mosaics, bronzes and silver taken from both sites are in Naples, along with the Farnese marbles. Seeing it first is the difference between walking empty rooms and furnished ones.
Pizza where it was invented, sfogliatella from the pastry shops, buffalo mozzarella from the plain outside, and espresso taken more seriously than anywhere else in the country.
The Amalfi Coast, Capri, Ischia, Procida and the Greek temples at Paestum are all within ninety minutes, and Sicily is an overnight ferry away.
Main attractions
Two days on the archaeology, two on the city. Do not attempt Pompeii and Herculaneum on the same day — it is possible and it wastes both.
A commercial town of perhaps twelve thousand people, buried in AD 79 and about two-thirds excavated: the forum, the amphitheatre, bath complexes, painted villas, bakeries, bars with sunken jars and the plaster casts of the dead.
Tip Three hours minimum, five if you are serious. Enter at Porta Marina, take a map, and know there is almost no shade.
A smaller, wealthier seaside town buried under twenty metres of volcanic material that carbonised rather than burned the wood. Roof beams, screens, furniture and second storeys survive, along with mosaics still in their rooms.
Tip Two hours and far less exhausting than Pompeii. If you only have time for one and hate crowds, choose this.
The Farnese collection of colossal Roman sculpture — the Farnese Bull carved from a single block, the Hercules — plus the Alexander Mosaic from the House of the Faun and room after room of Pompeian fresco and bronze.
Tip Go before the sites, not after. Three hours, and the Secret Cabinet of erotic material from Pompeii is included.
Still active, still monitored, and climbable: a bus or taxi to about 1,000 metres and then a thirty-minute walk up a gravel path to the crater rim, with the whole Bay of Naples below.
Tip Timed tickets are booked in advance and the summit closes in bad weather. Wear real shoes; the path is loose scoria.
A small Baroque chapel holding Sanmartino's Veiled Christ of 1753 — a marble figure under a marble shroud so thin it looks wet — and in the crypt two anatomical models that have unsettled visitors for two centuries.
Tip Timed entry, small rooms, sells out. Book a day or two ahead and go early.
The Greek grid still visible in Spaccanapoli and Via dei Tribunali: nativity-figure workshops on Via San Gregorio Armeno, the Duomo with the vial of San Gennaro's blood, and Baroque churches every fifty metres.
Tip Walk it in the morning and again at night. It is a different city each time, and both are worth it.
Greek stone quarries that became a Roman aqueduct and then air-raid shelters in 1943, forty metres beneath the centro storico — and, in the Rione Sanità, the early Christian Catacombs of San Gennaro.
Tip The catacombs are run by a local youth cooperative that transformed the neighbourhood. It is the most worthwhile ticket in Naples.
A Carthusian monastery on the Vomero hill with a marble cloister, the great Neapolitan nativity collection and the best view of the bay; and, north of the centre, Capodimonte's Titians, Caravaggio and Bruegel.
Tip Take the funicular up to San Martino at the end of the day for the view over the bay to Vesuvius.
Things to do
The archaeology needs planning and early starts. The city needs the opposite — walking, eating and no schedule.
Everything moveable from Pompeii and Herculaneum is in the National Archaeological Museum. Seeing the frescoes, the mosaics and the household bronzes first turns empty rooms into furnished houses.
Tip The single most useful piece of sequencing on this trip, and most visitors get it the wrong way round.
A margherita or a marinara from a wood oven at 480°C in ninety seconds, soft and blistered and folded in four to eat. Six or seven euros in the historic pizzerias of the centro storico.
Tip Expect a queue and a ticket number. Order one of the two classics — the long menus are for tourists.
Up to the crater rim of the volcano that buried the towns you have just walked through, looking down into it and out over the bay, Capri and the whole city.
Tip Book the timed ticket in advance and go on a clear morning — cloud sits on the summit and there is nothing to see in it.
The neighbourhood north of the centre, long written off and now the most interesting part of Naples: the catacombs, the Palazzo dello Spagnolo staircase, street art, and pastry shops with queues around the corner.
Tip Go on a guided walk run by the local cooperative. It is better than any tour of the centre.
Naples' line 1 stations were commissioned as public art, with Toledo's mosaic light-well the most striking. Then take a funicular up to the Vomero for the view.
Tip A day travel ticket covers metro, funiculars and buses. Toledo station is worth a stop even if you are not going anywhere.
Paestum, an hour and a half south, has three Greek Doric temples standing almost complete. Procida, thirty-five minutes by ferry, is the smallest and least developed island in the bay.
Tip Paestum's temples predate anything at Pompeii by four hundred years and get a fraction of the visitors.
Local food
Naples eats better for less money than anywhere else in Italy, and it does so with a very short list of things done exceptionally well.
A soft, wet-centred, leopard-spotted disc cooked in ninety seconds in a wood oven. Two classics: marinara, with tomato, garlic and oregano and no cheese, and margherita, with tomato, fior di latte and basil.
Where to try it The historic pizzerias of the centro storico. Take a number, wait, and order one of the two.
Neapolitan ragù is meat cooked in tomato for six hours or more until both give up, served on ziti; pasta e patate with provola is the everyday dish, thick enough to stand a spoon in.
Where to try it Family trattorias away from the tourist streets, especially on Sundays when the ragù comes out.
A shell of a hundred crisp pastry layers filled with semolina, ricotta and candied peel — riccia — or the softer shortcrust frolla version. Eaten warm, standing, at nine in the morning.
Where to try it The pastry shops near the station and in the Sanità, where they come out of the oven all day.
A yeasted cake soaked in rum syrup until it is barely holding together, sometimes filled with cream. Naples adopted it from the French court and has held onto it more firmly than anyone else.
Where to try it Any pasticceria. A good one drips when you pick it up.
Friarielli are bitter broccoli tops sautéed with garlic and chilli, served with sausage or on pizza. Buffalo mozzarella comes from the plain north of Salerno and is eaten within a day of being made.
Where to try it Trattorias for the sausage and friarielli; alimentari in the morning for mozzarella still in its whey.
Short, thick and served already sweetened unless you ask for it amaro. The tradition of the caffè sospeso — paying for a second coffee for whoever needs one — started in these bars.
Where to try it Any neighbourhood bar. Standing up, one euro, gone in ten seconds.
Accommodation
Naples is cheap by Italian standards and the districts differ sharply in character. Where you sleep changes the trip more than the price does.
Transport
Naples is well connected by air and rail, and it is the transport hub for the whole south-west.
The centre is walked; the hills are reached by funicular; the excavations are reached by a suburban railway that everyone complains about.
When to go
The excavations have almost no shade and no shelter, which makes the season a practical question rather than a comfort one. The city itself is fine year-round.
The strongest window: 18–28°C, the sites comfortable all day, wildflowers through Pompeii's ruins and the coast beginning to open. Book ahead around Easter.
Hot and humid, with the excavations exposed and exhausting and the ferry ports at capacity. Naples itself empties in August and many of its best restaurants close.
The pick of the year. The heat breaks, the crowds thin after early September, the sea is still warm and the light on the bay is at its best.
Mild at 10–15°C with some rain. Pompeii and Herculaneum are almost empty, the museum is a pleasure and prices are at their lowest. Short days, and the islands largely close.
Worth planning around: Pompeii between about eleven and four in July and August. There is essentially no shade across sixty-six hectares, water points are limited and the stone reflects the heat. Go at opening or in the last two hours.
Itinerary
The museum first, then the two excavations on separate days, with the city itself threaded between them.
Context first, then the streets.
A whole town, and a long day.
The smaller site, then the volcano above it.
The other Naples, or the Greek one.
Travel tips
Naples has a reputation that is half out of date and half worth respecting. These are the things that actually matter.
FAQ
Three to four. One day for the archaeological museum and the historic centre, one for Pompeii, one for Herculaneum and Vesuvius together, and a fourth for underground Naples, the Sanità or a trip out to Paestum. Two days is enough only if you skip either Herculaneum or the city itself, and both are worth keeping.
They are different. Pompeii is the scale: sixty-six hectares of streets, shops and public buildings, which takes four hours and leaves you with a sense of a whole town. Herculaneum is the preservation: buried by hot surges rather than ash, it kept wooden beams, doors, furniture and upper floors, in two hours and with far fewer people. If you have time, do both on separate days. If you have one day and dislike crowds, choose Herculaneum.
Far safer than its reputation, with the standard urban caveats. The real risks are pickpocketing on the Circumvesuviana line and around Piazza Garibaldi by the central station, and occasional bag-snatching from scooters. Keep bags closed and on the inside shoulder, avoid displaying phones on quiet streets at night, and the practical risk is low. The historic centre is busy and lively until late.
The Circumvesuviana railway from Napoli Centrale (Garibaldi level) to Pompei Scavi–Villa dei Misteri, about 35 minutes, with trains every half hour. The entrance is directly opposite the station. The faster reserved Campania Express runs the same route with fewer stops and more luggage space. Do not get off at the station called simply Pompei — that is the modern town.
Yes. Shuttle buses run from Ercolano and Pompei up to the national park car park at around 1,000 metres, from where a gravel path takes about thirty minutes to the crater rim. Entry is by timed ticket booked in advance, and the summit closes in poor weather. Go on a clear morning — in cloud there is nothing to see — and wear shoes with grip, as the path is loose volcanic scoria.
April to June and September to October. The excavations are open, exposed sites with almost no shade, which makes July and August difficult in the middle of the day. Spring and autumn give you 18–28°C and comfortable conditions all day. Winter is mild, cheap and by far the quietest time at Pompeii, at the cost of short days and closed islands.
Yes. Beyond the excavations there is a UNESCO-listed historic centre on a Greek street grid, the finest archaeological museum in Italy, Sanmartino's Veiled Christ, a Carthusian monastery with the best view of the bay, forty metres of tunnels beneath the streets, and the best food-to-price ratio of any major Italian city. Two days in the city itself is not padding.
Keep exploring
Places that pair well with Naples, whether you have a few spare days or are building a longer route.
Campania, Italy
A UNESCO-listed stretch of Campanian cliff with lemon terraces, ceramic-domed churches, a Norman-Arab cathedral at Amalfi and Ravello's gardens hanging over the sea.
Don't miss The Path of the Gods — a ridge trail 600 metres above the water, looking down on Positano and across to Capri.
Explore Destination — The Amalfi CoastLazio, Italy
The only capital where a Roman amphitheatre, a Renaissance basilica and a Baroque fountain are all a ten-minute walk apart, and where the best paintings are free in parish churches.
Don't miss The Pantheon — a working building since AD 126, still holding the largest unreinforced concrete dome on earth.
Explore Destination — RomeSicily, Italy
The Mediterranean's largest island and its most layered: Greek, Roman, Arab, Norman, Spanish and Baroque, with the best food in Italy and seven UNESCO listings.
Don't miss The Temple of Concordia at Agrigento — a Doric temple of the 440s BC still standing almost complete.
Explore Destination — Sicilyİzmir, Aegean, Turkey
The best-preserved classical city in the Mediterranean, where you walk the actual paved streets past a 24,000-seat theatre, public latrines and a library, with a small Turkish town alongside it.
Don't miss The Terrace Houses — six Roman apartments with mosaic floors, painted walls and plumbing, under a modern roof.
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