Naples

At L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele you don’t get a menu, you get a numbered ticket, and you wait until it’s called even if that means standing in the street with tourists from four continents while the ovens inside turn out nothing but Margherita and Marinara, the two pizzas Naples decided a century ago were the only ones that mattered. That refusal to diversify tells you something true about the city: Naples doesn’t perform for visitors, it just keeps doing what it’s always done and lets you decide whether to keep up.

When to go

April to June and late September through October are the calm windows, warm enough for the coast, cool enough that you’re not melting in the historic center’s narrow, sun-trapped alleys. July and August bring serious heat and the Amalfi Coast towns get swamped with day-trippers off cruise ships. Winter is underrated for the city proper, since Naples itself doesn’t shut down in the cold the way beach towns do, and you’ll have Capodimonte and the Archaeological Museum practically to yourself. Whatever the season, book Pompeii ahead: since March 2026 tickets there are personal, timed, and capped at 20,000 entries a day, with morning slots between 9am and 1pm limited to 15,000 visitors and selling out well in advance during peak months. Turning up without a slot in high season now means a real chance of being turned away.

Getting in and out

Capodicino airport sits close enough to the center that a taxi is almost pointless. The Alibus shuttle covers the roughly 15-minute run to Napoli Centrale for 5 euros, with departures every 20 to 30 minutes, and continues on to the port in about 35 minutes total. Buy the ticket from the machine at arrivals or on board rather than negotiating with a driver outside, because Naples taxis have a well-earned reputation for meter tricks, especially the “my meter is broken, I’ll just charge you a flat rate” routine aimed squarely at people who’ve just landed. Agree a fixed price before the car moves, or insist on the meter, and get a receipt.

Getting around and the one scam to know

The metro’s Line 1 is small but useful, its far end at Piscinola and Scampia stations in the north of the city, running down through the center to Garibaldi and Municipio near the port; it is not, contrary to what a lot of guides claim, a subway that spans the whole metropolitan area. For day trips, the Circumvesuviana regional train is what actually gets you to Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Sorrento, and it’s also where most petty theft happens. Bag snatching and pickpocketing on this line is common enough that it’s worth treating every crowded carriage as a hands-on-your-bag situation, and there have been reports of groups of children clustering at doors specifically to create the chaos that makes lifting a wallet easy. Keep valuables in a front pocket or a bag worn across the body, and don’t get lulled by how ordinary the train looks.

Neighbourhoods

The historic center, a UNESCO site running roughly from Piazza del Plebiscito up through Spaccanapoli, is where you’ll spend most of your time, dense with churches, street food, and noise that never really stops. The Spanish Quarter climbs the hill just behind Via Toledo, all narrow lanes strung with laundry and now some genuinely striking street art, including large murals of Maradona that have become informal shrines. Vomero, up on the hill and reachable by funicular, is quieter and more residential, with the best skyline views in the city and Capodimonte’s museum and park within reach. Chiaia, down by the waterfront, is where the money is, full of boutiques and calmer restaurants if the chaos of the center gets to be too much for an evening.

Food

Da Michele earns its queue: a Margherita runs about 6 euros, tickets are issued at the door, and once seated the pizza arrives inside ten minutes because they’ve been making exactly two varieties since 1870 and have it down to a science. It’s worth doing once, but Naples has excellent pizza well beyond that one address, and I’d rather send you to a quieter neighbourhood spot in the Spanish Quarter on a random Tuesday than fight the crowds outside Da Michele on a Saturday. For a different register entirely, a family-run trattoria doing baccalà and genovese ragu will show you what Neapolitan cooking looks like away from pizza entirely. Street food carries its own weight here: fried seafood cones, arancini, and sfogliatelle from a bakery counter rather than a sit-down menu are as essential as any restaurant meal, and cost a fraction of the price.

Sights worth the money

Pompeii’s standard Express ticket for the ancient city alone is 20 euros; the Pompeii+ ticket at 25 euros adds Villa dei Misteri and the outlying villas, and EU citizens aged 18 to 24 pay just 2 euros. Whatever ticket you choose, remember entry is single-use, so plan your route through the site before you go in, since walking back out for lunch means buying again. The National Archaeological Museum houses most of what was excavated from Pompeii and Herculaneum, including the mosaics and frescoes that never made it back to the site itself, and it deserves at least half a day. San Carlo, the oldest continuously active opera house in Europe, predates La Scala and is worth a performance if the schedule lines up with your visit.

Local favourite

Skip Capri if your schedule is tight and go to Procida instead, the small, unfussy island in the bay that gets a fraction of Capri’s crowds and none of the yacht-club pricing, with the same pastel houses and clear water that made Capri famous before Capri got expensive.

One thing to know before you go

Naples is loud, and the noise is not a sign that something’s wrong. Traffic doesn’t fully stop for pedestrians the way it does further north in Italy, scooters treat lane markings as suggestions, and crossing the street here is a negotiation rather than a formality. Watch how locals cross, walk at a steady pace rather than hesitating, and don’t expect a car to stop just because you’re in a crosswalk.