Naples 5 Day Itinerary

Naples 5-Day Itinerary

A woman with a baby will try to hand you a bracelet on Via Toledo and call it a gift. It is not a gift. Naples runs on this kind of low-grade theater, and once you know the script the city stops feeling chaotic and starts feeling like the most honest place in Italy.

Day 1: Historic Center & Piazza del Plebiscito

  • Land at Capodichino and skip the taxi rank scrum: the Alibus shuttle runs directly to Piazza Garibaldi and the port at Molo Beverello for a flat 5 euro, about fifteen minutes to the station. A metered taxi has fixed rates too, 21 euro to Napoli Centrale or 24 to the port, so agree the fare before the door closes if the meter looks like it is running instead.
  • Breakfast is a sfogliatella at Pasticceria Da Attanasio near the station, eaten standing at the counter the way everyone else does. Sitting down triples the price at most Naples cafes and nobody local does it for a pastry.
  • Walk the Historic Centre, a UNESCO site since 1995, and duck into San Francesco di Paola and Gesù Nuovo, the latter with its odd bulging tufa facade, quarry stone rejected as flawed and reused because Naples has never wasted anything.
  • Lunch at Da Domenico on Via dei Tribunali, a working pizzeria rather than a stage set. Order the marinara, tomato, garlic, oregano, no cheese, which is the older of the two Neapolitan classics and the one tourists skip in favor of margherita.
  • Afternoon in Piazza del Plebiscito, the Royal Palace, and the Archaeological Museum, which holds finds pulled straight out of Pompeii and Herculaneum and is arguably a better use of an hour than most of the ruins themselves.
  • Evening in Spaccanapoli. Skip anyone offering you free food on the street, that is the setup for the petition-signature or bracelet routine, and eat instead at Da Nennella, loud, communal tables, and a bill that will surprise you with how little the paranoia cost.

Day 2: Pompeii & Vesuvius

  • Take the Circumvesuviana train to Pompei Scavi, cheaper and nearly as fast as any organized coach, then walk the ruins yourself with an audio guide rather than trailing a flag-holding group through the House of the Faun.
  • Lunch near Ercolano rather than inside the Pompeii gates, where prices reflect a captive audience. Da Gemma is a fair sit-down option a short walk from the Herculaneum site.
  • Vesuvius requires a booked, timed ticket, about 10 euro before fees, and you cannot buy one at the gate. Entry runs in staggered groups of sixty every ten minutes, and July slots sell out days ahead, so book online before you leave the hotel that morning. The crater walk itself takes under an hour and the view over the bay is worth every one of the switchbacks.
  • Dinner back in Naples at La Taverna della Regina on Via Nilo, a straightforward trattoria with harbor views and a wine list that does not try too hard.

Day 3: Museums & Churches

  • Morning at Capodimonte, the museum built into a Bourbon hunting palace on a hill above the city, holding a Caravaggio Flagellation that alone justifies the taxi up. The collection is criminally under-visited compared to the Uffizi or the Vatican museums, which is exactly why it is worth the detour.
  • Coffee, not lunch, at Caffè Gambrinus on Via Chiaia, an 1860 institution where the sfogliatelle are better than the mains. Treat it as a stop, not a sit-down meal.
  • Afternoon at San Lorenzo Maggiore, Santa Chiara with its majolica cloister, and the Cappella Sansevero to see the Veiled Christ, a single marble sculpture so fine that legends about alchemical secrets still circulate. Book Sansevero tickets online in advance, it caps visitor numbers and the walk-up line regularly runs over an hour.
  • Evening in Vomero, reached by funicular rather than a slog uphill, for the view over the whole gulf. Dinner at a Salvator Rosa trattoria for genovese, a slow-cooked beef and onion ragu that predates tomato sauce in the Neapolitan kitchen and rarely appears on menus aimed at tourists.

Day 4: Island of Capri

  • Hydrofoils to Capri leave from Molo Beverello, not the slower car ferries from Calata Porta di Massa, with fares running roughly 25 to 45 euro one way depending on the operator and season. Book the earliest realistic departure, Capri by midday is a different, far more crowded island than Capri at nine.
  • The Blue Grotto is weather-dependent and closes outright at high tide or rough sea, so do not build the whole day around it. If it is open, the rowboat transfer and grotto entry run as a package sold at the grotto itself, cash is standard.
  • Lunch at Da Paolino in Anacapri, tables set under a working lemon grove, reservations essential in summer.
  • Take the chairlift up Monte Solaro from Anacapri rather than the road walk, twelve minutes each way and the best value view on the island, then wander past Villa San Michele.
  • Dinner back in Naples in the Tribunali quarter. Skip anywhere with a tout physically pulling you toward the door, that pressure is itself the review.

Day 5: Amalfi Coast or Procida

  • Procida is the quieter, cheaper call: a 40-minute ferry from Molo Beverello, pastel houses at Marina Corricella, and none of the summer gridlock that turns the Amalfi coast road into a parking lot by 11am. If your priority is photographs over prestige, go here.
  • If you go for Amalfi instead, take the ferry to Sorrento or Positano rather than the coastal bus, the SITA buses along the Amalfi Drive back up for hours on summer afternoons and a ferry sidesteps that entirely.
  • Lunch on the water, either destination has honest seafood a few streets back from the main harbor at half the price of the front-row tables.
  • Farewell dinner at D’Austria near Capodimonte, a quieter, more formal room than the trattorias of the previous nights, a fitting close before an early flight.

Transportation:

Naples proper is walkable, and the metro’s Line 1 art stations, Toledo and Municipio especially, are worth riding for their own sake. For day trips, the Circumvesuviana train reaches Pompeii and Herculaneum directly and costs a fraction of a guided coach; ferries from Molo Beverello cover Capri and Procida. Buy a single unica campania ticket if you are combining metro, bus, and train in one day, it works across all three.

Tips:

  • Book Vesuvius, Sansevero Chapel, and summer Capri ferries online before you land, all three sell out same-day slots in high season.
  • Anyone offering something free on the street, a bracelet, a rose, a signature, wants money for it a moment later. Keep walking.
  • Carry cash. Small trattorias and street food stalls often do not take cards, and pizza is priced by the piece at some counters, so ask first.
  • Standing at a cafe counter is cheaper than sitting at a table almost everywhere in the city, and it is how Neapolitans actually take their coffee.