Naples Travel Guide: Pompeii, Pizza and the Amalfi Coast

The base question is settled before anything else, and the answer is Napoli because the transport is already there. Capodichino airport sits inside the city. The Alibus runs from it to Stazione Centrale and Piazza Municipio for €5, and the ticket also covers further public transport for 90 minutes after you validate it. Buy it on the bus. The 3S bus reaches the same two stops for less, though few of its buses are air conditioned.

Taxis are the other way in, and the fixed fare from the airport to the central station was €18 per car in late 2023, day or night and with luggage included. Licensed cars wait at the exit and must display their fares, so walk past anyone who approaches you inside the terminal.

Napoli Centrale stands on Garibaldi square, with subway Line 1 below the platforms, and the Circumvesuviana local trains leave from the Piazza Garibaldi station a few hundred meters south-east under the same roof. Allow ten spare minutes if you have not changed there before, because the platform groups are split across substations and each board lists just its own lines.

For the water, hydrofoils and ferries leave from Molo Beverello beside Piazza Municipio, from Porta di Massa about a kilometer away on foot, and from Mergellina. A ferry to one of the islands can take up to 70 minutes; a hydrofoil is quicker and costs more. A guided Naples tour takes that timetable work off your hands.

The order below can shift with your start date, so treat it as the shape of the week rather than a timetable. Each day ends back in the same Naples hotel.

Day 1: Arrival, and the Center on Foot

Nothing is scheduled beyond check-in. Use the afternoon on the Centro Storico, where it is easy to lose the map early and stop caring.

Day 2: The Coast Road Through Sorrento, Positano and Amalfi

Three towns in one day sounds like a rush, and the drive is the reason it works: the road itself is the sight. The day starts at a limoncello factory, then gives you an hour in Sorrento to walk the town, then moves to Positano for the streets or a drink by the sea.

Amalfi comes after that, and it is the stop with something built to see: the Cathedral of St. Andrew. If the afternoon is too hot for it, the shore and a gelato are a fair exchange. The coastline you have been driving is a UNESCO World Heritage site, which is the sort of label that usually oversells a place and here does not.

Day 3: Capri by Hydrofoil

The hydrofoil leaves from the city port and lands you on Capri for the day. From the harbor the day is free time in Anacapri, the quieter half of the island, where the Church of San Michele carries an extra charge and depends on whether it is open. Then the Piazzetta, the small square that functions as the island's living room, and the Gardens of Augustus for the view back at the Faraglioni rocks.

Two warnings worth having. The sea decides the schedule, and when it turns rough the runs are stopped, so keep the evening loose. If you are sensitive to the rolling of a boat, or traveling with young children, take something before you board rather than after.

Day 4: Pompeii, Half a Day in a Roman City

This is the morning the trip is built around for a lot of people, and the format is a half-day excursion with a skip-the-line ticket and a local guide. The guided walk runs about two hours. In that time you cover cobbled streets, villas, temples and shops, and the plaster casts of the victims, made by pouring plaster into the cavities their bodies left in the compacted ash.

The route changes from day to day with site openings and visitor numbers, so no two groups see the same buildings. What the operator guarantees is one from each category: a temple, a market, an ancient shop, a villa, a thermal bath, a theater, and the Forum. Ask the guide that morning which extra buildings are open.

Day 5: Breakfast, and the Road Home

The trip ends after breakfast, with nothing scheduled. If your flight leaves in the afternoon, the morning covers Piazza del Plebiscito in one loop: the Royal Palace on its east side, the church of San Francesco di Paola on its west, and the colonnades running along both.

Naples is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, founded in the eighth century BC as Parthenope by Greek settlers from Cumae and refounded as Neapolis in the sixth century BC. The Romans took it in 320 BC and let its Greek culture and language stand, which is a fair summary of how the city handled most of the rulers who followed: Byzantines, Normans, Swabians, Angevins, Spanish, Bourbons.

By the seventeenth century it was the most populated city in Europe, with more than 400,000 inhabitants. Then came the eruption of Vesuvius in 1630, the revolt of Masaniello against the Spanish in 1647, and a plague in 1656 that killed half the population. The Bourbon century that followed left the palaces; unification in 1861 began a long decline, and the bombing of World War II deepened it. The city answered with the Four Days of Naples, the wartime revolt that drove the German occupiers out.

The UNESCO listing covers the historic center, which the evaluation committee called the largest in Europe, and the surrounding region holds an unusual concentration of World Heritage sites: Pompeii, Herculaneum, Cumae, Pozzuoli, Oplontis, Stabiae, the Royal Palace of Caserta and the Amalfi Coast. Vesuvius above the bay is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in its own right. Anyone who wants the region rather than one city can cover those sites on a single Italy tour.

Four breakfasts come with the room and the other meals do not, so budget one paid meal a day beyond the hotel. Pizza is the simplest answer for dinner and the one dish worth planning around: eat it in the Centro Storico on a night when nothing else is booked, sit down early enough to walk home afterwards, and skip the harbor restaurants on the Capri day, when the view is doing the pricing.

Via dei Tribunali is the street where dinner is easiest to get right without planning, and it leaves you a short walk from the hotels in the Centro Storico.

Naples gets more than 300 days of sunshine a year, a figure close to Los Angeles, and most of its rain falls on a handful of days in autumn, with about 1000 mm across the year. Winters are short and mild. Summers are long and hot.

For this itinerary the heat matters more than the rain. In a long hot summer the two hours you spend walking the ruins are the hottest of the week, so a hat and water earn their place in the bag. The light is stronger on the water, which is where the hydrofoil puts you, so cover up or use sunscreen on the Capri crossing.

Autumn rain rarely cancels a coast drive, but it can close the view in, and the prevailing wind, the libeccio, comes in from the sea to the south-west and decides how clear the bay looks. Snow is rare enough that the city treats it as an event.

A spare day in Naples is easy to fill and hard to choose. Four stops cover the range, all of them in the center or along the waterfront, so the day needs no transport. Treat the list below as the short version of a Naples travel guide: what earns the morning, and what can wait for a return trip.

Cappella Sansevero

A chapel built in 1590, holding the Veiled Christ carved by Giuseppe Sanmartino and a set of anatomical machines that still puzzle people. Entry is €12, and the room is small enough that the queue moves slowly, so arrive at opening.

Castel dell'Ovo

The oldest castle in the city, on the peninsula that was once the island of Megaride, where Greek colonists from Cumae founded the settlement that became Naples. Entry is free, and it stands in San Ferdinando, where Via Partenope follows the waterfront with the bay in view.

The National Archaeological Museum

Most of what came out of Pompeii and Herculaneum was carried here, and the Roman collection is one of the largest anywhere. It is the correct follow-up to the ruins, because the frescoes and household objects explain rooms that are bare on site.

Spaccanapoli and Via dei Tribunali

Two long, narrow, crowded streets running east to west through the center, lined with street vendors and old churches. Spaccanapoli is the nickname, meaning Naples splitter; the official names are Via Benedetto Croce on the western stretch and Via San Biagio dei Librai on the eastern one.

The region holds more than the loop covers, and none of these needs a new hotel. This Naples Italy tourism travel guide stops at the coast; the four stops below are what a second visit adds. Add one or two if your dates allow.

• Ischia and Procida. The two other islands in the bay, served by ferry and hydrofoil from Molo Beverello or Mergellina. Pick one island rather than trying both in a day.
• Paestum. Greek temples south of the city, and the drive is worth it for the temples alone.
• Caserta. The Royal Palace, a UNESCO site, reached by the trains toward Caserta that leave from Napoli Centrale.
• Herculaneum. The other buried Roman town, and the one to choose if you have half a day rather than a morning.