Naples for the Undecided: A First-Timer's Briefing

No Italian city divides opinion like Naples. It is chaotic, theatrical, layered with three thousand years of history, and it treats cheap food with the seriousness most cities reserve for expensive food. It is also dense, loud and short on the polish that Florence or Siena offer by default. Plenty of people come for two days, spend both of them rattled by the traffic and the volume, and go home saying they do not understand the fuss. Others come for three and start pricing flights back. If you are weighing up whether to go, this is the honest version: what the city asks of you, what it gives back, and how to arrange the days so the first outcome does not happen to you.

Key facts

• Where: Campania, southern Italy, on the Bay of Naples beneath Vesuvius
• Historic centre: a UNESCO World Heritage Site
• Airport: Naples Capodichino, unusually close to the centre, with a direct Alibus shuttle to the main station and the port
• Best months: April to early June, and September to October
• Time needed: three days for the city itself; four or five if you add Pompeii, Vesuvius or an island

What makes it worth the trip

Three things, mainly.

The first is the food, and specifically the food at the bottom of the price range. This is the birthplace of pizza, and the standard at street level is held up by a genuine local obsession rather than by tourism. A margherita at a serious pizzeria typically runs to somewhere around seven to nine euros, and a pizza folded into quarters and eaten on the pavement — the portafoglio — can still cost around two. Deep-fried food, pastry and coffee are equally taken seriously and equally cheap. You will eat better here for less money than almost anywhere else you are likely to be considering in Italy, and that is not a small part of the case for going.

The second is the archaeology, and the unusual way it is divided. The National Archaeological Museum holds the material lifted out of Pompeii and Herculaneum over two centuries of excavation — the mosaics, the bronzes, the wall paintings, the Farnese sculpture collection. The sites themselves, an easy train ride south, are what remains once that material was removed. Neither half makes complete sense without the other, which is the single most useful thing to know when planning your days.

The third is the sheer density of the historic centre. Spaccanapoli and Via dei Tribunali cut arrow-straight through a street grid the Greeks laid out, and the compression of churches, cloisters, workshops, market stalls and balconied tenements along them is not replicated anywhere else in Italy. Add the Cappella Sansevero with Giuseppe Sanmartino's veiled Christ of 1753, the quarries and aqueducts beneath the paving, the Caravaggio hanging in the church it was painted for at the Pio Monte della Misericordia, and Vomero's monastery looking down over the whole bay, and three days fills itself without effort.

How long to give it, and in what order

Three full days is the minimum that works. Two produces the rattled version. Five lets you add the archaeological sites and an island without ever feeling hurried.

Before anything else, check the day of the week. Naples clusters its closures awkwardly. The National Archaeological Museum and the Cappella Sansevero are both typically shut on Tuesdays, as is Castel Sant'Elmo up on the Vomero. Capodimonte and the Certosa di San Martino tend to close on Wednesdays instead. Arriving on a Monday evening and planning a museum day for Tuesday is the most common way a Naples trip goes wrong before it starts.

Day one: the historic centre, on foot. Book the Cappella Sansevero for an early slot — it is small, it uses timed entry, and summer weekends sell out days ahead; expect to pay around ten euros. From there walk Spaccanapoli east, taking in the majolica cloister at Santa Chiara and the Duomo, then double back along Via dei Tribunali. Give the middle of the afternoon to the underground city: Napoli Sotterranea descends through Greek quarry, Roman aqueduct and wartime shelter on a guided tour lasting roughly ninety minutes, usually for something around ten to fifteen euros depending on whether you book ahead. Finish with pizza, and expect to queue for it.

Day two: the museum, then the Sanità. Reach the National Archaeological Museum near opening — it typically runs from mid-morning to early evening, and the standard ticket, at around twenty euros, is generally valid across two consecutive days, which is worth knowing if you intend to come back for the Farnese rooms. Three hours is a realistic minimum. Afterwards, walk north into the Rione Sanità, a neighbourhood that was the city's most notorious within living memory and is now the most interesting thing happening in Naples. The Catacombs of San Gennaro are run by a cooperative of young people from the district itself, on guided tours of roughly forty-five minutes costing in the region of fifteen euros, with the ticket usually also covering the catacombs of San Gaudioso beneath the Basilica di Santa Maria della Sanità.

Day three: the heights and the water. Take one of the funiculars up to the Vomero in the morning for the Certosa di San Martino, where entry is usually around six euros and the belvedere gives you the definitive view of the bay, and neighbouring Castel Sant'Elmo, similarly priced and often discounted to a couple of euros late in the afternoon. Come down into Chiaia for lunch, then walk the pedestrianised seafront from Santa Lucia past Castel dell'Ovo towards Mergellina as the light goes. If you would rather trade the castles for paintings, Capodimonte holds a major collection including a Caravaggio, with entry typically around fifteen euros and the surrounding royal park free to walk in.

A note on sequence. Do the museum before Pompeii, not after. Walk into an excavated house having already seen the mosaic that was cut out of its floor and you are looking at a room; walk in cold and you are looking at a rectangle of stones.

Which neighbourhood to sleep in

This matters more in Naples than in most cities, because the difference between a good and a bad night's sleep here is about forty metres of street.

Chiaia is the elegant option: nineteenth-century apartment blocks, good bars, the seafront at the bottom of the hill, and a noise level that lets you recover. It is a fifteen-to-twenty-minute walk or a short metro ride from the historic centre, which is close enough.

Santa Lucia puts you on the water beneath the castle, slightly formal and slightly hotel-ish, but genuinely lovely at dawn and dusk.

The upper historic centre, around Piazza Bellini and the museum, gives you the atmosphere without the worst of the deep-centre noise, and puts you within walking distance of nearly everything on day one and two. Ask for a courtyard-facing room.

Vomero is quiet, residential and cheaper, with three funiculars connecting it to the city below. The trade-off is that the funiculars stop in the evening, which turns a late dinner into a taxi.

The area immediately around Napoli Centrale is where the cheapest rooms are, and there is a reason for that. It is scruffy, dispiriting after dark and badly placed for everything except a train. Unless you are catching a dawn departure, spend the extra.

Eating: where to go, and what it costs

The famous pizzerias are famous for good reason and you should visit at least one, but go in knowing the terms. L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele, in the streets near the station, serves a very short menu and can generate a wait approaching two hours at peak times. Gino Sorbillo on Via dei Tribunali does not take bookings for the main room and the queue outside is permanent. Both are still worth it if you arrive early, or at an odd hour, or are prepared to treat the wait as part of the experience. If you are not, the city is full of alternatives: Di Matteo, a few doors along the same street, does the folded street version for around a couple of euros; Starita up in Materdei draws a largely local crowd and typically closes on Mondays; Concettina ai Tre Santi, in the Sanità, has turned a family pizzeria founded in the early 1950s into something closer to a restaurant, with elaborate fried pizzas that can run to around eighteen euros.

Beyond pizza, seek out the friggitorie. Fried pizza — dough filled, sealed and dropped in oil — is the Neapolitan dish that travels least well and is hardest to find done properly elsewhere; Masardona, near the station, is the name most often cited for it. A paper cone of fried odds and ends, the cuoppo, costs a few euros and is a perfectly respectable lunch. For pastry, the sfogliatella comes in two forms, the crisp layered riccia and the soft frolla; Attanasio near the station and Pintauro on Via Toledo are the long-established names, and Scaturchio on Piazza San Domenico Maggiore is the grand-café version. In the Sanità, Poppella's fiocco di neve, a small brioche filled with milk cream, has become a genuine modern classic of the city in a little over a decade. Expect single pastries to cost somewhere in the low single-digit euros almost everywhere.

Getting around, and roughly what it costs

The centre is best walked, and you will walk more than you expect on uneven basalt paving, so bring shoes accordingly.

For everything else, the integrated ninety-minute ticket costs around one euro seventy and covers buses, the metro and the funiculars; a day pass runs to roughly four and a half to five and a half euros depending on which version you buy. Metro Line 1 is worth riding on its own merits — the Art Stations project embedded work by international artists into the network, and Toledo station was placed first in a ranking of Europe's most beautiful metro stations by the Daily Telegraph, a verdict CNN has echoed. The Alibus from the airport is a flat fare of around five euros to the station or the port and takes roughly half an hour depending on traffic.

For Pompeii, Herculaneum and Sorrento, the regional Circumvesuviana line is cheap and frequent and rarely comfortable. In the warmer half of the year the Campania Express runs the same route with guaranteed seats, air conditioning and far fewer stops, for a supplement on top of the standard fare; on a July afternoon it is money well spent. Ferries and hydrofoils for Capri, Ischia and Procida leave from Molo Beverello and the adjacent Calata Porta di Massa, with hydrofoil fares to Capri starting somewhere around twenty-five euros one way and the slower conventional ferries noticeably cheaper.

On the Campania Artecard: the three-day version costs around forty euros and bundles two free site entries, reductions thereafter, and regional transport. It pays for itself only if you are doing both the museum and Pompeii and moving between them by train. If you are staying in the city and walking, buy tickets individually.

The day trips, and how to choose

If you have one day, the instinct is Pompeii. Consider Herculaneum instead. It is smaller, closer, cheaper at around thirteen euros, and far better preserved — carbonised roof beams, upper storeys, wooden furniture and fittings that simply do not survive at Pompeii. You can see it properly in two or three hours rather than surrendering an entire exhausting day.

If you do choose Pompeii, the rules have tightened and you must plan around them. Admission is now capped at twenty thousand visitors a day, standard entry costs around twenty euros plus a booking fee, and through the main season — roughly mid-March to mid-October — you book a timed slot in advance. The morning window holds the large majority of the daily allocation and the afternoon window is much smaller, so the afternoon sells out first. Tickets are issued in the visitor's name and ID is checked at the gate, so the name on the booking has to match your passport exactly. Turning up on spec in August no longer works.

Vesuvius pairs naturally with either site. The crater path ticket costs around ten euros before fees, sells in small timed batches released roughly a month ahead, and a bus from Pompeii or Ercolano takes you most of the way up. The walk to the rim is short but exposed; skip it on a cloudy day, because you are paying for the view.

Of the islands, Procida is the one to pick for a day from Naples — forty-odd minutes by hydrofoil for somewhere around twenty euros, small enough to walk, and not yet overwhelmed. Capri in a single summer day from the city is mostly queueing.

What to be realistic about

Naples is intense, and pretending otherwise does no one any favours. Traffic is fluid rather than rule-bound and scooters treat pedestrian crossings as advisory; cross decisively and predictably rather than hesitating. The centre stays loud well into the night. The area immediately around the main station is shabby and best not wandered aimlessly after dark. None of this is dangerous by the standards of a large European city, but it does ask for ordinary attention: keep bags closed and on the inside shoulder, keep your phone out of your hand at the roadside, and leave anything you would hate to lose in the hotel safe.

The other thing to accept is that the city does not arrange itself for you. Churches close for long lunches, a site you planned around may be shut for a feast day, and the schedule you built will survive contact with reality about two-thirds intact. Build slack in.

When to go

April to early June and September into October are the sweet spot: warm, bright, and comfortable for a city you will cover almost entirely on foot. July and August are hot, humid and crowded, many family-run places shut for part of August, and the archaeological sites offer almost no shade — if you must come then, start at opening and write off the middle of the day. Winter is mild, wet and much quieter, and December is a genuine reason to visit in its own right: the nativity-figure workshops of Via San Gregorio Armeno run at full tilt, and the city is at its most theatrical. Expect rain and shorter museum hours in exchange.

Tip: Book outside the immediate station area, check which day of the week your key sites close before you fix the itinerary, and leave one afternoon with nothing booked at all. Naples repays wandering more than most cities repay planning — but only once the planning has been done.