Where to Stay in Naples, Campania

What is Naples known for?

Naples is the capital of Campania and the largest city of southern Italy. Pizza was invented in its lanes, the Naples National Archaeological Museum holds what was dug out of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and the Cappella Sansevero keeps the veiled Christ that Giuseppe Sanmartino cut from one block of marble. Vesuvius stands over the whole arrangement.

Three castles guard the waterfront, the blood of San Gennaro is brought out of Naples Cathedral to liquefy before the city, and the funiculars climb to Vomero.

What are the main landmarks in Naples?

Naples stacks its landmarks from the water up. Castel dell'Ovo sits on the islet where the Greeks landed, Castel Nuovo guards the port behind a white triumphal arch, and Castel Sant'Elmo holds the ridge with the Certosa di San Martino beside it. Between them lies the old city.

Naples Cathedral shelters the relic of San Gennaro, Pio Monte della Misericordia hangs a Caravaggio in its own church, and the Naples National Archaeological Museum keeps the bronzes and frescoes lifted from Pompeii.

What is the history of Naples?

Naples was founded by Greeks from Cumae as Neapolis, the new city beside an older settlement called Parthenope. Rome kept it Greek. Emperors learned the language here and built villas along the shore, and the street plan of the Centro Storico is still the grid the colonists laid out with three long decumani.

Byzantine dukes held out against the Lombards for centuries, and then the Normans took the whole south. Charles of Anjou made it a capital in 1266. Castel Nuovo went up for the new dynasty, the Aragonese followed, and Spanish viceroys ran the kingdom for two centuries, cutting Via Toledo through the hill and barracking their soldiers in the Quartieri Spagnoli above it.

The Bourbons built Teatro San Carlo and Capodimonte, dug Pompeii out of the ash and made Naples the largest city in Italy. Unification cost the city its crown. Cholera in 1884 brought the Risanamento, which drove Corso Umberto I straight through the lower town, and the war brought bombing, occupation and the four days in 1943 when the city threw the Germans out on its own.

Where is Naples?

Naples curves around the north side of its own bay in southern Italy, built on yellow tuff. Vesuvius closes the eastern end. West of the centre the ground turns volcanic again in the Campi Flegrei, a field of craters and steam that runs out to Pozzuoli, while the Posillipo ridge separates the city from that coast.

Capri and the Sorrento peninsula shut the bay to the south, and the tuff under the streets is quarried into cisterns, catacombs and the tunnels of the Crypta Neapolitana. The hills rise straight behind.

What is the climate of Naples?

Naples takes its weather off the Tyrrhenian. Summer is hot and rainless, and the sea breeze that comes in over Mergellina in the afternoon is the reason the seafront fills and the inland alleys empty. Autumn brings the rain in sheets.

Winter stays mild enough for lemons on the Sorrento slopes, though the scirocco drives grey swell against the sea wall at Santa Lucia and the storms come through in days rather than weeks. Snow on Vesuvius is news.

How do you get to Naples?

Naples sits at the southern end of the high-speed spine from Milan and Rome. Napoli Centrale on Piazza Garibaldi takes those trains, and the Circumvesuviana leaves from underneath it for Ercolano, Pompei and Sorrento. Boats go from Molo Beverello.

Hydrofoils cross to Capri, Ischia and Procida through the day, Capodichino airport lies inside the built-up area to the north-east, and Metro line 1 loops from the port up through Toledo to Vomero. The funiculars do the hills.