Naples 7 Day Itinerary (No Tourist Traps)
Seven days is our 6-day plan plus one deliberately unplanned day for whichever neighborhood grabbed you hardest. Naples the city, on its own, easily fills a full week without ever touching Pompeii or the coast; our Naples Italy itinerary is the one for that trip instead.
Book these before you go:
- Cappella Sansevero timed entry : closed Tuesdays, more than 15 minutes late forfeits the slot
- Napoli Sotterranea skip-the-line : walk-up queues run up to 90 minutes
- A pizza-making class or food tour : the easiest way to taste more than one pizzeria in one sitting
- Your Naples hotel : Centro Storico if noise doesn’t bother you, Vomero if it does
| Day | Focus |
|---|---|
| 1 | Centro Storico, Cappella Sansevero, Duomo di San Gennaro, pizza |
| 2 | MANN, Napoli Sotterranea, Quartieri Spagnoli |
| 3 | Castel dell’Ovo, Castel Nuovo, Chiaia, Vomero |
| 4 | Metro art stations, coffee culture, a trattoria dinner |
| 5 | Capodimonte museum and park |
| 6 | Pizza-and-pastry crawl, artisan shopping |
| 7 | Unplanned: your favorite neighborhood, again |
Day 1: The Veiled Christ, San Gennaro and Spaccanapoli
Start in the Centro Storico while the alleys are still just busy, not solid. Gesù Nuovo’s oddly bulging tufa facade and Santa Chiara’s majolica-tiled cloister are both free and both worth 20 minutes before the crowds thicken. Walk San Gregorio Armeno, then present yourself at the Cappella Sansevero for your booked slot: EUR12 standard, EUR8 for ages 18-26, more than 15 minutes late forfeits the ticket entirely. It’s a single small chapel built around a single sculpture, the Veiled Christ, and the whole visit runs under 30 minutes.
The Duomo di San Gennaro is a five-minute walk away. The nave is free, open daily roughly 8:00-19:30; the separate Cappella del Tesoro (EUR13, EUR9.50 reduced) is worth the extra ticket only if San Gennaro’s cult specifically interests you.
Dinner is pizza. L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele has served exactly two pizzas since 1870, margherita and marinara, worth the numbered-ticket queue once, just not on a Friday or Saturday night.
Day 2: MANN, Napoli Sotterranea and the Quartieri Spagnoli
Give MANN the whole morning. At EUR20 full price (EUR2 for EU citizens 18-25), it holds the mosaics, frescoes and bronzes lifted from Pompeii and Herculaneum, plus the Farnese Marbles. Closed Tuesdays, open 9:00-19:30, last entry 18:30.
After lunch, descend into Napoli Sotterranea : a 90-minute guided walk through Greco-Roman aqueduct cisterns and WWII air-raid shelters, EUR15, departing hourly from Piazza San Gaetano.
Spend the evening in the Quartieri Spagnoli. Eat standing up: pizza fritta for a few euro, sfogliatella for EUR2-4, espresso at the counter for under EUR1.20.
Day 3: Castel dell’Ovo, Castel Nuovo, Chiaia and Vomero
Morning at Castel dell’Ovo: entry free, Monday-Saturday roughly 9:00-19:30, Sunday and holidays 9:00-14:00, interior access intermittent during maintenance. Castel Nuovo is EUR6 standard, EUR4 reduced, open roughly 9:00-18:00 Monday-Saturday, closed Sundays; parts of the fortress are under renovation, confirm what’s open before you commit time.
Afternoon in Chiaia, then the funicular up to Vomero for Castel Sant’Elmo and the Certosa di San Martino. Dinner up there.
Day 4: Metro art, coffee culture and a slower pace
Ride Metro Line 1 to Toledo station, then one stop to Municipio, built over an excavated slice of ancient Neapolis. Caffè Gambrinus on Via Chiaia has served coffee since 1860; treat it as a stop for sfogliatella and espresso, not a sit-down meal. Trattoria dinner doing genovese or baccalà.
Day 5: Capodimonte, a full day away from the noise
Capodimonte earns a full day of its own: EUR15 entry, free the first Sunday of the month plus April 25, June 2 and November 4, housed in a Bourbon-era royal palace on a hill above the city. The collection includes a Caravaggio Flagellation and works by Titian and Bellini. The Real Bosco di Capodimonte, the palace grounds, is free and worth an hour for the views back down over the bay. Check current hours before you go.
Day 6: A dedicated pizza and pastry day
Treat this as a food day rather than a sightseeing day. Start with sfogliatella at a bakery counter rather than a table, EUR2-4 and a genuine breakfast staple here, not a novelty. Work through pizza fritta from a street stall, then a sit-down margherita and marinara at a Spaccanapoli pizzeria you didn’t hit on Day 1. Spend the afternoon back in San Gregorio Armeno, this time to actually buy something, then a full sit-down dinner, EUR30-50+ with wine, at a trattoria doing something other than pizza.
Day 7: The deliberately unplanned day
The best last day in Naples has no fixed agenda. Go back to whichever neighborhood actually grabbed you, Chiaia’s calm, Vomero’s view, or Spaccanapoli’s noise, and let it be slower the second time.
Is it a waste to leave the last day unplanned on a full week trip? No, it’s the better use of it. If one museum from earlier in the week deserved longer than you gave it, MANN’s Farnese Marbles or Capodimonte’s Caravaggio are the two most likely candidates; this is the day to go back rather than cram in a new sight you’ll rush through anyway.
Do your last-minute shopping at San Gregorio Armeno rather than an airport gift shop, sfogliatella and a coffee standing at whichever counter is closest, and a final dinner wherever the week’s best meal was, not somewhere new purely because it’s the last night.
A week in Naples the city, no day trips, proves the point this whole itinerary has been making: the city was never the layover. Book the Sansevero and Sotterranea slots before you land; everything else on this list is walk-up.