Napoli
337 places
Sacred artCappella Sansevero (Cristo Velato)
Napoli (NA)
Beneath a veil of marble that still seems to breathe, Sanmartino's Cristo Velato rests in the chapel's half-light, and the whiteness of the stone deceives every eye.
Sacred artDuomo di Napoli
Napoli
Three times a year the city holds its breath as the blood of San Gennaro waits to liquefy, among Gothic naves and the gold of the chapel devoted to him.
Sacred artCappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro
Napoli
Behind a bronze gate lie silverware, gems and the jewel-studded mitre of the saint: a treasure heaped up over centuries by the devotion of Naples.
Sacred artChiesa del Gesù Nuovo
Napoli
The facade of pyramid-cut piperno stone hides symbols carved into the blocks, while inside the Baroque bursts out in marble and in the memory of the physician Giuseppe Moscati.
Sacred artChiostro di Santa Chiara
Napoli
A garden of pillars clad in yellow and blue majolica, where lemon pergolas and eighteenth-century scenes painted on the tiles keep the noise of the city at bay.
History & archaeologyStatua del Nilo ("Corpo di Napoli")
Largo Corpo di Napoli
A river god reclining for centuries in a quiet square, whom Neapolitans call the Corpo di Napoli: he leans his bearded head among putti and a sphinx.
- Sacred art
Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco
Via Tribunali 39
Bronze skulls stand guard at the entrance, and down in the hypogeum the cult of the anime pezzentelle (adopted souls of the dead) still leaves flowers and prayers beside abandoned crania.
Sacred artChiesa di Santa Luciella ai Librai (teschio con le orecchie)
Napoli
In the crypt of a small church rediscovered in the maze of the Librai rests the skull with ears, which the faithful believed could listen to their prayers.
Sacred artPio Monte della Misericordia
Via Tribunali
Above the altar of an octagonal church still hangs, exactly where Caravaggio painted it, his Sette opere di Misericordia: a single canvas holding all the charity in the world.
Sacred artSan Gregorio Armeno
Napoli
The street of the presepe (nativity scene) masters, where terracotta shepherds are shaped all year round and the alley smells of glue and wood beneath Baroque bell towers.
- Museums
Ospedale delle Bambole
Napoli
Behind a shop window in Palazzo Marigliano a craftsman mends glass eyes, porcelain arms and dolls' curls, in a workshop born more than a century ago.
- Sacred art
Complesso dei Girolamini
Napoli
Beyond the white facade open one of the oldest libraries in Naples and a silent picture gallery, among wooden shelves and canvases hung by the Oratorian fathers.
Sacred artSan Giovanni a Carbonara
Napoli
A double forceps-shaped flight of stairs leads up to the church, inside which the monumental tomb of King Ladislao rises like a tower of marble.
History & archaeologyCappella Pontano
Decumani
A small Renaissance temple on the decumanus, which the humanist Pontano had raised for his lost wife, still lined inside with Latin inscriptions dictated by his grief.
- History & archaeology
Sedile di Nilo
Decumani
On the corner of a small Spaccanapoli square survives the seat of the old Nilo quarter, where the nobles once gathered before the sedili of Naples vanished.
- Sacred art
Guglie di San Gennaro
Decumani
The oldest of the Neapolitan spires, raised in thanksgiving to the patron saint who is said to have halted the lava of Vesuvius, his bronze statue keeping watch beside the Duomo.
- Sacred art
Immacolata
Decumani
In the heart of piazza del Gesù the Baroque spire soars straight up, an explosion of marble and statues crowned by the Immacolata turned toward the sky.
- Sacred art
San Domenico
Decumani
The square where the heart of Spaccanapoli beats, with the Baroque spire at its centre and the apse of the Angevin basilica that once held the rooms of San Tommaso.
History & archaeologyPort'Alba
Napoli
A seventeenth-century arch cut into the walls leads to the booksellers' street, where stalls of second-hand volumes pile up among yellowed pages and the shade of the old city.
- Castles
Palazzo Sansevero
P.za San Domenico Maggiore
On the corner of piazza San Domenico the palace of the princes of Sangro still carries the echo of the night when Gesualdo surprised and killed Maria d'Avalos and her lover.
- Sacred art
Ruota degli Esposti
zona Forcella
The revolving wooden drum where for centuries newborns were laid in secret, and from which so many Neapolitans inherited the surname Esposito.
- Views & panoramas
Murale di San Gennaro (Jorit)
Forcella
Fifteen metres high on a facade in Forcella, Jorit's San Gennaro has the face of a young worker marked by the two red stripes of the human tribe.
History & archaeologyPorta Capuana
zona Garibaldi
Between two cylindrical towers an arch of white marble opens like a Renaissance triumph, the old city gate facing the road to Capua.
CastlesCastel Capuano
zona Garibaldi
An old Norman castle that for four centuries served as the courthouse of Naples: here justice held session in frescoed halls, in the shadow of nearby Porta Capuana.
VillagesMercato di Porta Nolana
zona Garibaldi
Beneath the Aragonese arch of Porta Nolana the fish market erupts with voices, crates of seawater and shellfish still alive: Naples at its most unvarnished.
VillagesLa Pignasecca
Montesanto
The oldest market in Naples unspools through the alleys of Montesanto: fish stalls, fry shops and old-time botteghe (traditional shops) in a hubbub that never stops.
- History & archaeology
MANN — Museo Archeologico Nazionale
P.za Museo
One of the world's great archaeological museums: here the Toro Farnese, the mosaics of Pompeii and the Gabinetto Segreto tell the whole ancient Mediterranean in a single visit.
Nature & hikingOrto Botanico
via Foria
Founded in the Napoleonic age, the botanical garden on via Foria lines up glasshouses, palms and rare species across twelve hectares: a green breath a step away from the traffic.
History & archaeologyReal Albergo dei Poveri
P.za Carlo III
An eighteenth-century colossus willed by Charles of Bourbon to shelter the poor of the Kingdom: a façade running more than three hundred metres, among the largest historic buildings in Europe.
- Sacred art
Cimitero delle 366 Fosse
Poggioreale
Ferdinando Fuga drew here one pit for every day of the year: 366 anonymous graves for the city's poor, an Enlightenment geometry of dying beneath the hill of Poggioreale.
Sacred artCimitero delle Fontanelle / Museo delle Capuzzelle
Rione Sanità
Thousands of nameless skulls line the old tufo (volcanic tuff) quarry: the capuzzelle (little skulls) that Neapolitans adopted and cared for, in the tender, desperate cult of the souls of purgatory.
Sacred artCatacombe di San Gaudioso
Basilica della Sanità
Beneath the basilica of the Sanità, early Christian catacombs where noble dead were portrayed with their real skull set above the painted body: death put on stage.
History & archaeologyIpogei dei Cristallini
Sanità
Twelve metres below the Rione Sanità, Greek tombs of the 4th century BC with frescoes intact — Egyptian blues and trompe-l'oeil: Hellenistic Neapolis found again in a baron's garden.
History & archaeologyPalazzo Sanfelice
Sanità
In the heart of the Sanità, Ferdinando Sanfelice signed his hawk-wing staircase: a baroque set piece of open flights, chosen again and again by the cinema for its theatrical sweep.
Sacred artChiesa di Santa Maria della Sanità
Sanità
Fra Nuvolo's basilica keeps watch over the quarter it gives its name to: dedicated to San Vincenzo, 'o Munacone to Neapolitans, it holds the Catacombe di San Gaudioso beneath it.
- Sacred art
Presepe Favoloso
Sanità
In the sacristy of the basilica of the Sanità the Scuotto brothers have lit up more than a hundred figures: a presepe (nativity scene) where eighteenth-century tradition and fairy tale interlace, suspended between the sacred and sheer wonder.
History & archaeologyNapoli Sotterranea / Galleria Borbonica
centro
Forty metres beneath the city, Greco-Roman tunnels and the gallery willed by Ferdinand II: aqueducts, wartime shelters and vintage cars abandoned in the belly of Naples.
- Sacred art
Basilica di San Gennaro extra Moenia
Sanità
Outside the ancient walls, beside the catacombs that once held the body of San Gennaro: one of the oldest churches in Naples, in the shade of the Capodimonte hill.
- Sacred art
Certosa
Vomero
A charterhouse looking out over the whole bay from the Vomero hill: silent cloisters, baroque marbles and a riot of inlay, where the monks prayed before the finest view in Naples.
Sacred artMuseo di San Martino
Vomero
Inside the Certosa, the museum tells Naples in all its forms: the famous Cuciniello presepe (nativity scene), views of the city and the royal barges, among the loveliest cloisters of the Vomero.
- Views & panoramas
Belvedere di San Martino
Vomero
From the forecourt of the Certosa the gaze drops sheer onto Naples: the rooftops of the old centre, the bay, Vesuvius and the islands far off — all in a single frame.
- Nature & hiking
Pedamentina di San Martino
Vomero→centro
A fourteenth-century stairway dropping from the hill of San Martino down to the city: hundreds of steps through vegetable plots, gardens and glimpses of the bay — one of the finest urban paths in Naples.
- Nature & hiking
Vigna di San Martino
collina S. Martino
One of the largest urban vineyards in Europe, worked by the Carthusians since the fourteenth century: seven hectares of vines, citrus and olive trees hanging over the bay, a step from the city's chaos.
Street artQuartieri Spagnoli (vicoli + murale Maradona)
QS
A grid of alleys born in the sixteenth century for the Spanish troops: laundry strung overhead, votive shrines and, at the end of a small square, the great Maradona mural everyone comes looking for.
VillagesBorgo Marinari
S. Lucia
At the foot of Castel dell'Ovo, the little fishermen's borgo (old village) is now a marina of boats and restaurants: stone, salt air and the legend of Virgil's egg hidden in the foundations.
- Views & panoramas
Lungomare
via Partenope
A seafront walk from via Partenope: Vesuvius straight ahead, Castel dell'Ovo out on the water, and all of Naples strolling slowly through the evening between a gelato and the horizon.
Views & panoramasFontana del Gigante
via Partenope
A seventeenth-century fountain by Pietro Bernini and Naccherino, moved again and again before settling on the seafront: marble and tritons facing the water, in the shadow of Castel dell'Ovo.
History & archaeologyPiazza del Plebiscito
centro
The great square opens between the colonnade of the basilica of San Francesco di Paola and the Palazzo Reale: a hemicycle, equestrian statues and an emptiness that in Naples is close to a miracle.
History & archaeologyPalazzo Reale
P.za Plebiscito
On the facade the kings of Naples keep watch from their niches over the empty sweep of Piazza del Plebiscito; inside, marble staircases and rooms that still smell of the court.
History & archaeologyTeatro San Carlo
centro
The red and gold of the oldest working opera house in Europe, where since the eighteenth century the voice has risen towards the frescoed ceiling and the royal box.
History & archaeologyGalleria Umberto I
centro
Beneath the dome of glass and iron the light falls on the marble floor; footsteps and echoes get lost in the octagon, among the shopfronts of the late nineteenth century.
- Views & panoramas
Gran Caffè Gambrinus
P.za Trieste e Trento
Mirrors, stucco and Belle Époque velvet: at the counter you order an espresso and, by old Neapolitan custom, you leave a second one paid for whoever comes next.
- Views & panoramas
Palazzo Mannajuolo (scala ellittica)
via Filangieri
The elliptical staircase climbs in a perfect spiral of steps and Liberty-style railings: lean over from the top and the eye falls into a vortex of stone.
Nature & hikingVilla Comunale
Riviera di Chiaia
The garden stretched out along the sea at Chiaia: avenues of holm oaks, benches and old statues, with the gulf breathing beyond the iron railing.
- Nature & hiking
Acquario Anton Dohrn
Riviera di Chiaia
The oldest aquarium in Europe, opened in 1874 inside the Villa Comunale: historic tanks inhabited only by the fauna of the Gulf of Naples, behind the glass.
History & archaeologyMonte Echia / Pizzofalcone (ascensore)
S. Lucia
The tufo (volcanic tuff) hill where Partenope was born, the city's first nucleus: a lift rises up the cliff and at the top the gulf opens out from Santa Lucia to Vesuvius.
- Views & panoramas
Rampe di Pizzofalcone
Monte di Dio
The ramps drop in hairpins from Monte di Dio, between old walls and sudden glimpses of the sea: a slow shortcut worth taking for the view alone.
Sacred artParco Vergiliano a Piedigrotta (tombe di Virgilio e Leopardi)
Mergellina
A park climbing at Piedigrotta holds the columbarium known as the tomb of Virgil and, just below, that of Leopardi: two poets in the greenery, above the traffic.
Views & panoramasParco Virgiliano
Posillipo
At the far end of Posillipo the terraces look out over the islet of Nisida and the open sea: from here the eye takes in the whole gulf and the Campi Flegrei.
- Views & panoramas
Terrazza di Sant'Antonio (tredici scese)
Posillipo
Thirteen flights of steps climb to the terrace of Sant'Antonio, where the gulf lines up like a postcard: Vesuvius, sea and city in a single glance.
- Views & panoramas
Via Petrarca / Via Orazio
Posillipo
The two roads run halfway up the hill of Posillipo, natural terraces suspended over the gulf: little villas, bougainvillea and the sea appearing between one bend and the next.
- History & archaeology
Parco Archeologico del Pausilypon
Posillipo
The imperial villa of Vedius Pollio looking over the Gaiola: theatre and odeion among the pines, there where the Romans called this place the pause from pain.
- History & archaeology
Grotta di Seiano
Posillipo
A Roman tunnel nearly eight hundred metres long bores through the hill in the dark, then opens onto the light of the Gaiola valley and the villa of Pausilypon.
Free beachesIsola
Posillipo
The "cursed" island: owners struck by suicides and misfortune (Agnelli, Getty); a marine protected area with submerged ruins; guided snorkelling with CSI Gaiola ~€20, glass-bottom boat ~€12; 150 steps.
Free beachesParco Sommerso della Gaiola
Posillipo
Two islets of tufo (volcanic tuff) joined by a fragile arch, a marine protected area: you swim above submerged Roman ruins while the legend speaks of a cursed island.
Views & panoramasMarechiaro e la Fenestella
Posillipo
The fishing borgo (old village) where Salvatore Di Giacomo imagined the fenestella with its carnation: below, the shallow water and Vesuvius closing the horizon.
CastlesPalazzo Donn'Anna
Posillipo
The unfinished seventeenth-century palace juts sheer over the water, dark and labyrinthine: through its empty rooms legend has the shadow of Donn'Anna still wandering.
- Free beaches
Lido delle Monache / spiaggia libera di Posillipo e Riva Fiorita
Posillipo
Tiny coves among the rocks, once the bathing place of the nuns of a convent above the sea: almost secret free beaches, reachable mostly from the water.
- Free beaches
Baia di Trentaremi
Posillipo
A bay closed in by high cliffs of yellow tufo (volcanic tuff), with caves cut by the Romans: no road reaches it, only the sea and the kayaks slip in among the rocks.
- History & archaeology
Metro Linea 1 "Stazioni dell'Arte" (Toledo, Università, Materdei, Municipio, Dante)
città
The stations of Linea 1 are underground museums: at Toledo you descend into a cone of blue mosaics and light, among the most beautiful stops in Europe.
History & archaeologyAnfiteatro Flavio
Pozzuoli
The third largest Roman amphitheatre, at Pozzuoli: above ground the tiers, but it is underground that it strikes you, in the intact passages from which the beasts rose.
- History & archaeology
Tempio di Serapide (Macellum)
Pozzuoli
Not a temple but the ancient Roman market: on the marble columns the holes bored by marine molluscs tell how much the Flegrean ground has risen and sunk over the centuries.
Nature & hikingSolfatara
Pozzuoli
The ground breathes: hissing fumaroles, mud that boils up and a smell of sulphur reminding you how alive the earth is beneath the Campi Flegrei.
History & archaeologyAntro della Sibilla
Bacoli
A long trapezoidal corridor carved into the tufo (volcanic tuff), cut by blades of light, where Virgil imagined the Sibyl prophesying among the shadows of the rock.
History & archaeologyParco di Cuma
Bacoli
The oldest Greek colony in Italy, with the temples of Apollo and Jupiter stretched across the acropolis between pines and sea, where history begins in silence.
History & archaeologyCento Camerelle
Bacoli
A labyrinth of cisterns on two levels dug into the tufo (volcanic tuff), also called Carceri di Nerone, where Roman water ran beneath a villa facing the gulf.
In the water & divingParco Sommerso di Baia
Bacoli
A Roman city swallowed by the sea through bradyseism: mosaics, columns and statues visited from a glass-bottomed boat or with a mask.
History & archaeologyTerme di Baia e Castello Aragonese (Museo Campi Flegrei)
Bacoli
Terraces of imperial baths descending towards the sea, and above them the Castello Aragonese guards the statues brought back up from the sunken Baia.
CastlesCasina Vanvitelliana
Lago Fusaro, Bacoli
An octagonal pavilion that seems to float on Lago Fusaro, a Bourbon hunting lodge reached by a little bridge, among reflections and morning mists.
- Views & panoramas
Belvedere Stupor Mundi
Monte di Procida
A terrace suspended on the tufo (volcanic tuff) sheer above the sea, from which the eye runs to Procida, Ischia and Capri, all the way to Capo Miseno.
- History & archaeology
Tomba di Agrippina
Bacoli
Not a tomb at all but the remains of a small Roman theatre by the sea, tied by legend to Agrippina, mother of Nero, killed at Bauli.
- History & archaeology
Grotta della Dragonara
Capo Miseno
An Augustan cistern carved into the tufo (volcanic tuff) of Capo Miseno, five naves and twelve pillars under a barrel vault, perhaps the reservoir of the imperial fleet.
- Free beaches
Capo Miseno e porticciolo di Acquamorta
Bacoli/Monte di Procida
The headland that closes the gulf and, at its foot, the little harbour of Acquamorta with the boats hauled ashore and the water shallow and clear.
History & archaeologyScavi di Ercolano
Ercolano
A Roman town petrified by volcanic mud, with wooden beams, beds and doors still in place: here time stopped more intact than anywhere.
History & archaeologyVilla di Oplontis (Poppea)
Torre Annunziata
The villa d'otium attributed to Poppaea, Nero's wife, with frescoes of illusory gardens and a great pool facing rooms whose colours are still vivid.
History & archaeologyVilla Regina
Boscoreale
A small farming villa given over to wine, with the great dolia (wine jars) sunk into the courtyard where the must fermented in the shadow of Vesuvius.
History & archaeologyAntiquarium
Boscoreale
The museum that tells of daily life at the foot of Vesuvius before the eruption, among carbonised loaves, farm tools and finds handed back by the ash.
VolcanoesVesuvio — Gran Cono
Ercolano
The last stretch climbs on foot over the scree to the rim of the crater, where the warm breath of the earth mixes with the view of the whole Gulf of Naples.
- Nature & hiking
Valle dell'Inferno
Ottaviano
The wild hollow between Monte Somma and the Gran Cono, among ropy lava flows and broom that in spring sets the landscape ablaze with yellow.
Nature & hikingMonte Somma
Ottaviano
The ancient volcanic ring that embraces Vesuvius, with its jagged crests and woods of holm oak and chestnut where the noise of the city gets lost.
- Villages
Borgo di Casamale
Somma Vesuviana
The medieval heart enclosed by Aragonese walls and towers, a tangle of alleys where every four years the Festa delle Lucerne lights thousands of little lamps.
History & archaeologyMuseo dell'Osservatorio Vesuviano
Ercolano
The oldest volcanological observatory in the world, willed by the Bourbons in 1841, with historic instruments and mineral collections, looking out over the slopes of Vesuvius.
- History & archaeology
Miglio d'Oro e Ville Vesuviane (Villa Campolieto)
Ercolano
The eighteenth-century residences of the Neapolitan nobility along the Miglio d'Oro, with Villa Campolieto and its elliptical portico facing the sea among stuccoes and gardens.
- Sacred art
Belvedere del Deserto — Sant'Agata sui Due Golfi
Massa Lubrense
From the old Carmelite convent the gaze takes in both gulfs at a single turn, Naples and Salerno, high above Sant'Agata.
Free beachesBaia di Ieranto
Nerano
The bay protected by the FAI that looks across at the Faraglioni of Capri, reachable only on foot among olive trees and scrub, with the clear water of an old quarry.
Nature & hikingPunta Campanella
Massa Lubrense
The furthest tip of the Sorrento peninsula, a wind-beaten marine reserve between the two gulfs, with its watchtower and Capri an arm of sea away.
- Free beaches
Cala di Mitigliano e grotta
Massa Lubrense
A path through olive trees drops down to the rocks, Capri looks an arm's length away, and the cave opens in the water like a hall of shadow and salt.
- Free beaches
Fiordo
Massa Lubrense
A cleft in the rock where the sea slips in, narrow and green, almost always shaded beneath high walls: you don't come here for the sun, but for the silence.
- Free beaches
Marina di Crapolla
Massa Lubrense
Seven hundred steps down from Torca lead to a tiny landing place, where the chapel of San Pietro rests on Benedictine ruins and fishermen carve boat shelters out of Roman columns.
- Free beaches
Bagni della Regina Giovanna
Capo di Sorrento
The ruins of Pollio Felice's Roman villa look down on a natural pool, joined to the sea by a rock arch where the water changes colour with every hour.
- Free beaches
Marina del Cantone
Nerano
The widest pebble beach on the peninsula, where at sunset the restaurants serve the spaghetti alla Nerano born right here, between fried courgettes and provolone del monaco cheese.
- Free beaches
Recommone
Nerano
A few steps from Marina del Cantone, a small cove tucked among the rocks, with a watchtower on the headland and water that stays clear until late.
- Free beaches
Spiaggia di Tordigliano
Vico Equense/Positano
A long wild beach with no roads and no beach clubs, reachable only on foot from the main road: dark sand, Mediterranean scrub and the silhouette of Li Galli on the horizon.
Nature & hikingVallone dei Mulini
Sorrento
A canyon in the heart of the town where an old grain mill crumbles under the vegetation, wrapped in ferns and damp air, in a microclimate that time has forgotten.
- Villages
Marina Grande di Sorrento
Sorrento
Below the town's cliffs, the old fishermen's borgo (old village) with houses faded by the salt, boats hauled ashore and trattorias fragrant with frying.
- Sacred art
Villa Comunale di Sorrento e Chiesa/Chiostro di San Francesco
Sorrento
A terrace suspended over the gulf beside the fourteenth-century cloister of San Francesco, where interlacing arches and bougainvillea frame Vesuvius and the notes of the summer concerts.
History & archaeologyMuseo Correale
Sorrento
In the family villa of the Correale counts: porcelain, inlaid wood and eighteenth-century views of Naples, and a garden that runs down to a belvedere over the sea.
History & archaeologySedile Dominova
Sorrento
The only surviving noble sedile in Campania, an open sixteenth-century loggia with a frescoed dome and majolica tiles, today a club for the town's elders on the corner of two alleys.
History & archaeologyVilla Fondi
Piano di Sorrento
The villa of the de Sangro family overlooking the gulf, with a garden sheer above the sea and the Georges Vallet archaeological museum gathering the finds of the peninsula.
- Nature & hiking
Monte Faito e il Molare
Vico Equense
Beech woods a step from the sea, where the Molare marks the highest summit of the Lattari and on clear days the eye travels from Ischia to the Cilento.
- Views & panoramas
Punta Scutolo e belvedere di Arola/Monte Comune
Vico Equense
The headland that divides two gulfs and, higher up, the plateau of Monte Comune above Arola, from where the eye takes in Naples and Salerno in a single sweep of the horizon.
Free beachesMarina di Seiano
Vico Equense
The little harbour of Vico Equense beneath the tufo (volcanic tuff) walls, with the fishermen's boats, the bathing clubs on the rocks and a reef that shelters the water from the wind.
History & archaeologyVilla Jovis
Capri
On the highest, loneliest point of the island, the ruins of the villa from which Tiberius ruled the empire for ten years, among cisterns, terraces and the emptiness of the sea all around.
- Views & panoramas
Salto di Tiberio
Capri
The sheer cliff beside Villa Jovis, from which legend says Tiberius had those who betrayed him thrown into the sea: three hundred metres of void beneath your feet.
CastlesVilla Lysis (Fersen)
Capri
Built in 1905 by the poet Fersen and dedicated to love and to sorrow, an Art Nouveau villa among the pines, with a Latin inscription at the entrance and the opium room hidden below.
History & archaeologyVilla Malaparte
Punta Massullo
Curzio Malaparte's red house glued to the rock of Punta Massullo, with the trapezoidal stairway climbing to the roof: a scene out of Godard's Le Mépris, suspended over the sea.
Nature & hikingArco Naturale
Capri
An arch of rock suspended among the holm oaks, sheer above the sea, all that remains of an ancient collapsed cave, at the end of a path above Matermania.
Nature & hikingGrotta di Matermania
Capri
A great cave that the Romans turned into a nymphaeum, with niches and traces of stucco facing the dawn, perhaps consecrated to the Magna Mater from which it takes its name.
- Nature & hiking
Pizzolungo
Capri
The path that runs along the hillside among the myrtle bushes, passing beneath Malaparte's house until it opens onto the Faraglioni seen from above.
- Views & panoramas
Belvedere di Tragara
Capri
At the end of the lane lined with villas and bougainvillea, the terrace where the Faraglioni line up perfectly, three rocks rising from the blue like the island's signature.
- Views & panoramas
Belvedere di Punta Cannone
Capri
Climbing through alleys and gardens beyond the Certosa, a rock balcony hanging over Marina Piccola, with the Faraglioni on the left and the wind arriving from two seas.
- Views & panoramas
Parco Astarita
Capri
Terraces looking out over the sea through Mediterranean scrub, where the gaze drifts slowly toward the Sorrento peninsula and the coast, far from the hurried pace of the town centre.
Nature & hikingGiardini di Augusto
Capri
Flowerbeds and stairways suspended over the blue, with the Faraglioni on one side and the white hairpin bends of Via Krupp plunging down on the other.
Nature & hikingVia Krupp
Capri
A stairway of white hairpin bends carved into the sheer rock, dropping from the Giardini di Augusto all the way to the turquoise sea of Marina Piccola.
Sacred artCertosa di San Giacomo
Capri
Silent cloisters and fourteenth-century walls of a charterhouse facing the sea, where time seems to have stopped among white arches and gardens.
- Free beaches
Marina Piccola
Capri
The beach on the southern side where the sun lingers until evening, with the Faraglioni in the background and the rocks where legend has the sirens sing.
- Free beaches
Scoglio delle Sirene
Capri
The rock that divides the two beaches of Marina Piccola, where legend places the song of the sirens that tempted Ulysses along this coast.
In the water & divingGrotta Azzurra
Anacapri
You enter lying flat in a small rowing boat through a low cleft, and inside the water lights up in a luminous blue that seems to rise from the depths.
- In the water & diving
Grotta Bianca
Capri
Pale limestone walls in a two-chambered cavity hollowed out by the sea, once a shelter for boats and a hiding place from pirate raids.
In the water & divingVerde
Capri
The water turns emerald green where light filters in through a submerged opening, and at the far end a small pebble beach lies hidden.
- In the water & diving
Meravigliosa
Capri
A stairway carved into the rock leads to a vault thick with stalactites and stalagmites, suspended above the Grotta Bianca and the island's thousand-year-old strata.
Nature & hikingMonte Solaro (seggiovia)
Anacapri
The chairlift climbs in silence over vineyards and gardens to the island's highest peak, where the eye takes in the whole gulf.
Sacred artEremo di Cetrella
Anacapri
A small Marian hermitage tucked among the rocks below Monte Solaro, reached on foot through the scent of the scrub and the silence of the heights.
MuseumsVilla San Michele (Axel Munthe)
Anacapri
The white house that Swedish doctor Axel Munthe built among ancient columns and pergolas, with its granite sphinx gazing out over the Gulf of Naples.
HikingScala Fenicia
Marina Grande→Anacapri
The ancient stone stairway that for centuries was the only link between Marina Grande and Anacapri, step after step up the face of the mountain.
History & archaeologyCasa Rossa
Anacapri
The Pompeian-red residence an American colonel wanted in Moorish style, today the keeper of the Roman statues recovered from the waters of the Grotta Azzurra.
Sacred artChiesa di San Michele (pavimento maiolicato)
Anacapri
A majolica floor tells of Adam and Eve driven out of the Garden of Eden, to be admired from above to take in the full sweep of its eighteenth-century colours.
- History & archaeology
Villa Damecuta
Anacapri
The remains of an imperial Roman villa on a sheer promontory, among olive trees and a medieval tower, with the gaze stretching toward Ischia.
- Nature & hiking
Sentiero dei Fortini
Anacapri
A path along the western coast linking the small Napoleonic-era forts, through Mediterranean scrub, wild coves and the sound of the waves.
- Views & panoramas
Belvedere della Migliera
Anacapri
At the end of the Migliera walk, among vegetable plots and vineyards, the terrace opens onto the Punta Carena lighthouse and the vertical drop of Monte Solaro.
- Nature & hiking
⚠️ Il Passetiello
Capri⇄Anacapri
The old, dizzying pass that linked Capri and Anacapri before the roads existed: a steep, rough climb for those with a sure foot.
- Free beaches
Bagni di Tiberio / Palazzo a Mare
Capri
A small bay reached by boat, where the submerged remains of the seaside villa that belonged to the emperor Tiberius surface in the shallow water.
Views & panoramasFaraglioni
Capri
The three rocks that symbolise the island, rising from the sea, one pierced by a natural arch beneath which boats pass for a good-luck kiss.
Nature & hikingScoglio del Monacone
Capri
A solitary rock just beyond the Faraglioni, isolated in the deep blue, sought out by those after a swim far from the crowds and the beaten routes.
History & archaeologyGrotta delle Felci
Capri
A prehistoric cave on the southern slope, where excavations have yielded traces of Neolithic people, reached by a path through the ferns.
- Villages
Marina Corricella
Procida
The oldest fishermen's borgo (old village) on Procida, an amphitheatre of pastel houses tumbling down to the harbour, where the boats sleep beneath the hanging laundry.
- Sacred art
Terra Murata
Procida
The ancient core of Procida climbs the yellow tufo (volcanic tuff) headland, between defensive walls and narrow alleys, suspended between the little harbour of Corricella and the horizon of the bay.
- Sacred art
Abbazia di San Michele
Procida
Behind the walls of Terra Murata, the abbey dedicated to its patron Michael guards paintings, an antique presepe (nativity scene) and catacombe carved into the tufo, its vault turned towards the sea.
CastlesPalazzo d'Avalos (ex carcere)
Terra Murata
First the palace of the d'Avalos family, then a prison until the late twentieth century: the empty cells command Terra Murata, suspended between the memory of the inmates and the silence that lives there now.
- Views & panoramas
Belvedere Elsa Morante e dei Cannoni
Procida
From the terrace named after Elsa Morante, among old cannons trained on the bay, the view opens onto the Corricella and its pastel houses heaped upon the water.
- Free beaches
Spiaggia del Pozzo Vecchio ("del Postino")
Procida
The dark-sand beach where Massimo Troisi filmed Il Postino, tucked below the cemetery and the tufo walls, with shallow water and the stillness of a film set never struck.
- Free beaches
Spiagge di Chiaia
Procida
A long stairway leads down to it: a broad stretch of sand and shingle sheltered by high tufo walls, with the fishing boats of the Corricella colouring the background.
- Free beaches
Chiaiolella
Procida
The crescent-shaped little harbour on Procida's gentler side, with moored boats, tables at the water's edge and the bridge that leads from here towards the island of Vivara.
- Villages
Casale Vascello
Procida
An old fortified casale at the foot of Terra Murata: coloured houses press around a courtyard, with the arched vefi (external staircases) once shielding the inhabitants from Saracen raids.
Nature & hikingIsola di Vivara
Procida
A green crescent joined to Procida by a footbridge: a nature reserve on an ancient crater, between Mediterranean scrub, migrating birds and paths that lean out over the sea.
- In the water & diving
Punta Pizzaco e Solchiaro (snorkeling)
Procida
On the southern side, between the cliffs of Solchiaro and the walls of Pizzaco, clear water and rocky seabeds invite you to swim with a mask, far from the crowds.
CastlesCastello Aragonese
Ischia Ponte
A fortress on a rocky islet tied to Ischia by a stone causeway, layered with millennia of history, the gaze ranging over the bay between walls, courtyards and gardens.
- In the water & diving
Parco Sommerso di Aenaria
baia di Cartaromana
Beneath the bay of Cartaromana lie the remains of the ancient Roman port of Aenaria: you explore them from a glass-bottomed boat or with a mask, among amphorae and submerged structures.
- Free beaches
Baia di Cartaromana
Ischia
A small bay looking out on the Castello Aragonese and the Sant'Anna rocks, where thermal springs warm the sea and the Torre di Guevara keeps watch from the meadow above the water.
VolcanoesMonte Epomeo
Ischia
The roof of the island at almost eight hundred metres: from the green tufo summit, with its hermitage carved into the rock, the eye takes in all of Ischia and the bay as far as Capri.
Sacred artChiesa del Soccorso
Forio
White and plain on the headland of Forio, the sailors' church faces the open sea: here, among majolica tiles and ex voto, people come to wait for one of the island's most famous sunsets.
- History & archaeology
Villa Arbusto (Coppa di Nestore)
Lacco Ameno
The museum villa of Lacco Ameno holds the Coppa di Nestore, an 8th-century BC vessel incised with one of the oldest Greek verses ever found.
Views & panoramasFungo di Lacco Ameno
Lacco Ameno
A tufo rock shaped by wind and sea until it came to look like a mushroom: it rises a few steps from the shore and has become the emblem of Lacco Ameno.
CastlesTorre di Guevara
Ischia
Raised at the end of the fifteenth century on the meadow of Cartaromana, the tower also known as di Michelangelo faces the Castello Aragonese and the Sant'Anna rocks, and now frames art exhibitions.
- Nature & hiking
Giardini Ravino
Forio
Between the vineyards of the Epomeo and the sea of Forio, a garden of cacti and succulents: one of the richest collections in Europe, among century-old saguaros and rare species.
- In the water & diving
Siti diving AMP Regno di Nettuno (Formiche di Vivara, Parete di Sant'Angelo, Scoglio della Nave, Secca del Bell'Ommo, Mezzatorre)
Ischia/Procida
The seabeds of the Regno di Nettuno marine protected area, among the shoals and walls off Vivara and Sant'Angelo, where gorgonians and shoals of fish move through the clear water.
- Hiking
Sentiero degli Dei
Agerola→Nocelle
The path that runs along the mountainside between Agerola and Nocelle, suspended above the coast: terraces, dry-stone walls and the sea opening all the way to the Faraglioni of Capri.
- Nature & hiking
Gole del Sammaro
Sacco
The Sammaro torrent has carved a canyon of vertical walls where cold water runs through narrow gorges, one of the wildest passages of the inland Cilento.
- History & archaeology
Museo Vivo del Mare e della Dieta Mediterranea
Pioppi (Pollica)
Inside the seventeenth-century Palazzo Vinciprova, where Ancel Keys studied the Mediterranean diet, the aquariums tell the story of the Cilento seabed, and upstairs the scientist's library rests in silence.
History & archaeologyReal Sito di Carditello
San Tammaro
A Bourbon lodge standing alone in the Caserta countryside, the heart of a royal estate given over to hunting and horse breeding, survivor of abandonment and reborn today.
- Nature & hiking
Noce delle Streghe / Ripa delle Janare
fiume Sabato
On the banks of the Sabato, legend places the walnut tree where the janare (Benevento witches) gathered by night: a site of Lombard pagan rites that still feeds the myth of the witches.
Sacred artBasiliche paleocristiane di Cimitile
Cimitile (NA)
Around the tomb of Saint Felix, a rare complex of early Christian basilicas layered over the centuries preserves mosaics and frescoes, the memory of Paulinus' Christian Nola.
- History & archaeology
Festa dei Gigli + Nola
Nola (NA)
Every June, wooden spires tens of metres high are carried shoulder-high through the streets in honour of San Paolino, in a festival recognised by Unesco.
Sacred artSantuario Madonna dell'Arco
Sant'Anastasia (NA)
At the foot of Vesuvius, the Marian sanctuary draws every Easter Monday the fujenti dressed in white, among walls covered with ex voto and promises of grace.
Nature & hikingReggia di Portici + Orto Botanico
Portici (NA)
Commissioned by the Bourbons at the foot of Vesuvius, the palace looks out over the sea of the Miglio d'Oro; behind its eighteenth-century halls, the botanical garden gathers palms and rare plants in a green breath of air.
History & archaeologyScavi di Stabia (Villa San Marco e Villa Arianna)
Castellammare di Stabia (NA)
Poised on the edge of the Varano hill, the patrician villas of Stabia preserve frescoes and gardens with the breath of the sea: Roman luxury buried by Vesuvius and left almost intact.
Nature & hikingValle dei Mulini di Gragnano
Gragnano (NA)
Where water once turned the mills, the valley of Gragnano guards ivy-clad ruins and waterfalls; not far off, the breeze of the gorge dried the pasta of the town.
- History & archaeology
Museo del Corallo
Torre del Greco (NA)
In Torre del Greco, capital of coral, the museum gathers hand-carved cameos and red branches: the memory of a town that has been carving the treasure of the sea for centuries.
- History & archaeology
Palazzo Mediceo
Ottaviano (NA)
At the foot of Vesuvius, the ancient fortress that the Medici turned into a residence dominates Ottaviano; today it houses the park authority, suspended between medieval stone and gardens in the shadow of the volcano.
- Nature & hiking
Parco archeo-fluviale di Longola
Poggiomarino (NA)
On the banks of the Sarno, among channels and islets, a Bronze Age village resurfaces: stilt houses and boats of a river port buried in the mud for millennia.
CastlesCastello di Acerra
Acerra (NA)
Built over a Roman theatre, the castle of the Counts dominates the square of Acerra: a mass of tufo (volcanic tuff) among towers and courtyards, where the medieval fortress became a lordly residence.
- History & archaeology
Museo di Pulcinella
Acerra (NA)
In the land that claims the origins of Pulcinella, the museum devoted to the black mask tells the jests, voice and disguises of a character born among these alleys and taken to the stage everywhere.
CastlesCastello di Lettere
Lettere (NA)
Perched on the Monti Lattari, the castle of Lettere watched over the Amalfi frontier: from its ruins the gaze runs from the Gulf of Napoli to the Sarno valley, beneath Vesuvius.
- Street art
Murales di Maradona
Napoli (NA)
In the Quartieri Spagnoli a giant mural of Maradona has turned a courtyard into a secular shrine, among scarves, votive candles and fans on pilgrimage.
- Views & panoramas
San Gennaro di Jorit
Napoli (NA)
At Forcella, Jorit gave San Gennaro the face of a street kid: a huge patron saint watching over the district from the walls.
- Street art
Madonna con la pistola (Banksy)
Napoli (NA)
In piazza dei Girolamini, Banksy's Madonna wears a pistol in place of a halo, the street artist's only Neapolitan work, now protected behind glass.
- Sacred art
Museo Jago (Sant'Aspreno ai Crociferi)
Napoli (NA)
In a church of the old town Jago shows his marble sculptures, among them the Figlio Velato: the contemporary in dialogue with Neapolitan baroque.
- History & archaeology
Napoli Sotterranea
Napoli (NA)
Forty metres beneath the alleys, Greek quarries and Roman cisterns turned into shelters during the war: another Naples carved into the tufo (volcanic tuff), dark and cool.
History & archaeologyStadio Diego Armando Maradona
Napoli (NA)
At Fuorigrotta the old San Paolo now bears the name of Maradona: on match nights the whole city seems to hold its breath.
Sacred artCatacombe di San Gennaro
Napoli (NA)
In the Sanità district open two levels of frescoed galleries where San Gennaro was buried, the largest catacomba in the South carved into the yellow tufo (volcanic tuff).
Views & panoramasPalazzo dello Spagnolo
Napoli (NA)
In the Sanità district the Palazzo dello Spagnolo opens its courtyard onto a double-ramp staircase, wings of stucco like a falcon's: baroque turned into stagecraft.
- Street art
Murale Maradona-Pino Daniele-Troisi (Torre Enel)
Napoli (NA)
On the former Torre Enel of the Centro Direzionale, Jorit has raised vertically the faces of Maradona, Pino Daniele and Troisi: the Neapolitan trinity watching over the city from on high.
- Street art
Maradona 'Dios Umano' di Jorit
Napoli (NA)
In San Giovanni a Teduccio a colossal Maradona fills an entire suburban building, suspended between the divine and the human in the gaze Jorit painted for the neighbourhood.
- Street art
Parco dei Murales (Parco Merola)
Napoli (NA)
Among the tower blocks of Ponticelli, the courtyards of Parco Merola have become an open-air gallery, with tender figures and giant faces painted on the facades of the public housing.
- Street art
Murale di BLU all'ex OPG
Napoli (NA)
On the walls of the former judicial asylum of Materdei, today an occupied space, the huge figure signed BLU turns the memory of confinement into a gesture of collective redemption.
- Street art
Murale 'Totò e la Banda degli Onesti'
Napoli (NA)
Totò and Peppino De Filippo return to the walls of Napoli in the scene from 'La Banda degli Onesti', funny and tender, where a little cup of coffee becomes a lesson in life.
- Street art
Murales di Cyop&Kaf 'Quore Spinato'
Napoli (NA)
In the alleys of the Quartieri Spagnoli a great red heart girdled with barbed wire, signed Cyop&Kaf, tells without words the rough, stubborn love of this part of Napoli.
- Street art
Iside / Pudicizia di Bosoletti
Napoli (NA)
In the Quartieri Spagnoli Bosoletti rewrites in negative the veiled Pudicizia of the Sansevero: a woman's figure surfaces on the plaster, at once delicate and monumental.
- Street art
Murale di Massimo Troisi di Jorit
San Giorgio a Cremano (NA)
In San Giorgio a Cremano, his birthplace, the face of Massimo Troisi painted by Jorit watches over the neighbourhood with the same gentle irony as his films.
- Street art
Stazione Toledo (Stazioni dell'Arte)
Napoli (NA)
Toledo station descends into the deep blue of the sea through Tusquets' 'Crater de luz', where the shimmering mosaics turn the metro into a plunge into water and light.
Street artStazione Università (Karim Rashid)
Napoli (NA)
Karim Rashid has turned Università station into a flash of magenta and fluid surfaces, futuristic geometries conceived as a hymn to knowledge and connection.
Street artStazione Materdei
Napoli (NA)
Materdei station weaves together natural light and coloured mosaics, bringing back to the surface the breath of a hillside neighbourhood often left off the usual itineraries.
Street artStazione Dante
Napoli (NA)
At Dante station contemporary art inhabits the daily passage, from Joseph Kosuth's neon to the works that accompany commuters between the piazza and the bowels of the city.
- Street art
Capri: The Island of Art
Capri (NA)
Murals by Ozmo and Eron inspired by the island (Eron's 'Epic Fights').
History & archaeologyMuseo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte
Napoli (NA)
In the Bourbon palace set within a monumental wood, Capodimonte holds Titian, Caravaggio and the Farnese collection, with the gulf appearing beyond the tree-lined avenues.
History & archaeologyMADRE — Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina
Napoli (NA)
In the Donnaregina palace the MADRE gathers contemporary art in Napoli, from the site-specific installations conceived for its rooms to the great names of the later twentieth century.
History & archaeologyPAN — Palazzo delle Arti Napoli
Napoli (NA)
At Palazzo Roccella, among the elegant streets of Chiaia, the PAN hosts exhibitions of art, photography and comics, a civic space where contemporary research meets the city.
History & archaeologyGallerie d'Italia — Palazzo Zevallos
Napoli (NA)
On via Toledo the Gallerie d'Italia hold Caravaggio's last canvas, the 'Martirio di sant'Orsola', painted in Napoli in the final months of his life.
- Views & panoramas
Casa del Portuale
Napoli (NA)
On the port of Napoli, Aldo Loris Rossi's Casa del Portuale rises like a concrete spaceship, brutalist architecture whose cylindrical pillars are inspired by the quayside silos.
Views & panoramasLe Vele di Scampia
Napoli (NA)
Le Vele di Scampia, enormous sail-shaped structures designed in the 1970s, remain a controversial icon of the Neapolitan periphery, between demolitions and the memory of redemption.
Views & panoramasMostra d'Oltremare
Napoli (NA)
Among the rationalist avenues of Fuorigrotta, geometric fountains and the Torre delle Nazioni sketch a suspended 1940s landscape, where architecture becomes the perfect stage set for the camera.
History & archaeologyRione Terra
Pozzuoli (NA)
On the acropolis of Pozzuoli, evacuated in 1970 because of bradyseism, the Rione Terra guards beneath its houses an intact Roman town of streets, workshops and paved hinges.
- Hiking
Alta Via dei Monti Lattari
Castellammare di Stabia (NA)
The ridge of the Monti Lattari, traced by a long crest path, runs among beech woods and rocky balconies suspended between the gulf of Naples and that of Salerno.
- Hiking
Anello di Punta Campanella
Massa Lubrense (NA)
At the tip of the Sorrento peninsula the trail reaches Punta Campanella, where a watchtower gazes at Capri opposite, across a narrow, blue arm of sea.
HikingMonte Faito
Vico Equense (NA)
Above the gulf of Naples the Faito covers itself in cool beech woods, a destination of panoramic ridges where in summer you breathe mountain air a stone's throw from the sea.
- Hiking
Sentiero del Passetiello
Capri (NA)
The ancient mule track that once crossed the island from Capri to Anacapri climbs steeply among the holm oaks, until it suddenly opens onto the Faraglioni and Marina Piccola.
- Hiking
Salita al Gran Cono del Vesuvio (da Quota 1000)
Ercolano (NA)
From Quota 1000 the trail climbs the ash up to the rim of the Gran Cono, where the smoking crater opens up and below stretches the whole gulf of Naples.
CastlesMaschio Angioino (Castel Nuovo)
Napoli (NA)
Its cylindrical towers watch over the port, while the triumphal arch of white marble is set into the dark stone like a doorway to the Renaissance.
CastlesCastel dell'Ovo
Napoli (NA)
On the little islet of Megaride, the oldest fortress in Naples reaches out over the sea, wrapped in the legend of the egg hidden by Virgil in its foundations.
CastlesCastel Sant'Elmo
Napoli (NA)
A star-shaped fortress on the Vomero hill, from its ramparts it offers the widest view over the city, the gulf and Vesuvius on the horizon.
- Sacred art
Certosa e Museo di San Martino
Napoli (NA)
Beside Sant'Elmo, the Carthusian monastery weaves together marble cloisters and a sumptuous church, keeper of the most famous collection of Neapolitan presepi (nativity scenes).
- History & archaeology
Palazzo Reale di Portici
Portici (NA)
Commissioned by the Bourbons at the foot of Vesuvius, the palace looks out on the sea on one side and the volcano on the other, set in a park that runs down to the coast.
- Castles
Castello di Baia
Bacoli (NA)
On the high promontory sheer above the gulf, the Aragonese castle guards the statues resurfaced from the submerged Roman city of the Campi Flegrei.
- Castles
Palazzo d'Avalos e Terra Murata
Procida (NA)
At the highest point of Procida, the ancient fortified borgo of Terra Murata (walled village) culminates in the palace turned prison, suspended between the pastel houses and the sea of Corricella.
- In the water & diving
Parco della Gaiola
Napoli (NA)
Below Posillipo, two islets linked by a fragile bridge: the Gaiola marine protected area, with submerged Roman ruins, transparent waters and the whispered fame of a cursed island.
History & archaeologyPiscina Mirabilis
Bacoli (NA)
At Bacoli, forty-eight pillars hold up the vault of a Roman cistern dug into the tufo (volcanic tuff): the largest ever built, an underground cathedral that once quenched the Misenum fleet.
Nature & hikingLago d'Averno
Pozzuoli (NA)
In the extinct crater of a volcano, the still waters of Averno: for the ancients the threshold of the underworld, the one Aeneas crossed to descend into the kingdom of shadows.
- In the water & diving
Baia di Sorgeto
Forio (NA)
On Ischia, where boiling thermal springs gush among the rocks and mingle with the sea, the bay of Sorgeto offers a warm bath even in winter, under the stars.
Nature & hikingGiardini La Mortella
Forio (NA)
Above Forio, the gardens that Susana Walton cultivated for her composer husband: tree ferns, water lilies and streams in an amphitheatre of volcanic rock facing the Ischia sea.
Views & panoramasFaro di Punta Carena
Anacapri (NA)
At the western tip of Capri, among flat rocks where you dive into the blue, the lighthouse marks one of the island's most intense and long-awaited sunsets.
Views & panoramasFaro di Capo Miseno
Bacoli (NA)
At the mouth of the Campi Flegrei, the headland that was the base of the Roman fleet closes the gulf with a lighthouse overlooking Procida, Ischia and the sea of Miseno.
History & archaeologyAnfiteatro di Liternum
Giugliano in Campania (NA)
On the shores of Lake Patria, where Scipio Africanus chose voluntary exile and death, the amphitheatre and forum of Liternum remain, a Roman colony facing the coast.
- History & archaeology
Lanificio Borbonico
Napoli (NA)
Behind Porta Capuana, inside a former Renaissance convent, the old Bourbon factory that wove the uniforms of the Kingdom is reborn today as a space for art and craft.
VolcanoesCratere degli Astroni
Napoli (NA)
An extinct crater enclosed by wooded walls, with small lakes and silent trails: once a Bourbon hunting reserve, today an oasis where the woodpecker marks the time.
VolcanoesMonte Nuovo
Pozzuoli (NA)
Born in a single night from a sixteenth-century eruption, the youngest mountain of the Campi Flegrei holds within its crater a green silence looking out over the gulf of Pozzuoli.
- In the water & diving
Fonte di Nitrodi
Barano d'Ischia (NA)
Water that gushes warm among the rocks as it did two thousand years ago, when the Romans offered it to the nymphs: here the skin finds its calm.
- In the water & diving
Fonte delle Ninfe Nitrodi
Barano d'Ischia (NA)
A garden of springs where waters once dear to Apollo and the nymphs flow, among olive trees and open-air pools, far from the sound of the sea below.
- Nature & hiking
Spiaggia delle Fumarole
Serrara Fontana (NA)
Near Sant'Angelo the sand burns from the steam rising underground: here eggs are cooked beneath the grains and the swim becomes a thermal ritual.
- In the water & diving
Terme di Cavascura
Barano d'Ischia (NA)
In a gorge carved into the rock, pools and grottoes used since antiquity: you descend a canyon to plunge into scalding waters gushing from the mountain.
- In the water & diving
Parco Termale Negombo
Lacco Ameno (NA)
A botanical garden descending to the bay of San Montano, with thermal pools hidden among rare plants, artworks and the blue of the sea.
- In the water & diving
Parco Termale Poseidon
Forio (NA)
On the bay of Citara dozens of pools at different temperatures face the sea, among flowering terraces and the sunset that sets the water of Forio ablaze.
- Free beaches
Spiaggia dei Maronti
Barano d'Ischia (NA)
The island's longest beach, golden beneath walls of tufo (volcanic tuff), where in places the sand steams and the seawater warms itself.
- Free beaches
Baia di San Montano
Lacco Ameno (NA)
A crescent sheltered from the winds, with shallow, clear water turning turquoise: Ischia's gentlest bay, cradled between two green headlands.
- Free beaches
Spiaggia della Chiaiolella
Procida (NA)
On the island's western side, the broad sandy beach where Procida watches the sunset, with the fishermen's boats and Vivara closing the horizon.
- Nature & hiking
Marina di Chiaiolella e Vivara
Procida (NA)
A crescent-shaped harbour from which the bridge to Vivara sets off, a sickle-shaped islet turned nature reserve, realm of migratory birds and Mediterranean scrub.
Sacred artChiostro di San Francesco
Sorrento (NA)
Interlaced arches in tufo (volcanic tuff) and a bougainvillea spilling over the portico: in the fourteenth-century cloister of San Francesco the convent's silence opens onto the light of Sorrento.
- In the water & diving
Cala di Mitigliano
Massa Lubrense (NA)
You walk down among olive trees and scrub to a pebble cove facing Capri, where the water is so clear the seabed blurs into the sky.
- Villages
Marina della Lobra
Massa Lubrense (NA)
Colourful boats hauled ashore, nets spread out and the church facing the sea: below Massa Lubrense a small fishing harbour survives, far from the clamour of the coast.
- Sacred art
Cattedrale dell'Annunziata di Vico
Vico Equense (NA)
Clinging to a spur of tufo (volcanic tuff) sheer above the sea, the Annunziata is the peninsula's only Gothic cathedral: inside, the half-light; outside, the Bay of Naples flung wide open.
History & archaeologyMuseo Mineralogico Campano
Vico Equense (NA)
In a seventeenth-century former convent of Vico Equense, thousands of minerals from all over the world gathered by a single enthusiast, down to a fragment of graphene donated by a Nobel laureate.
- Nature & hiking
Giardini di Cataldo
Sorrento (NA)
You stroll beneath pergolas of lemon and orange trees in the heart of Sorrento, amid the scent of citrus and a taste of limoncello made at home by the family that tends the garden.
- Views & panoramas
Belvedere di Sant'Agata sui Due Golfi
Massa Lubrense (NA)
From here, in a single glance, the two gulfs: Naples with Vesuvius on one side, Salerno and the mountains on the other, with the watershed of the Sorrento peninsula underfoot.
- History & archaeology
Parco Archeologico di Cuma e Antro della Sibilla
Bacoli (NA)
In the oldest Greek colony of the West you walk the long trapezoidal gallery carved into the tufo (volcanic tuff), the Antro della Sibilla, where according to Virgil the prophetess delivered her oracles.
History & archaeologyMuseo Ferroviario di Pietrarsa
Portici (NA)
In the old Bourbon workshop where Italy's first railway was born, historic locomotives rest by the sea, with the Vesuvius closing the horizon.
- History & archaeology
Parco Archeologico di Liternum
Giugliano in Campania (NA)
By Lago Patria surface the forum, basilica and theatre of the Roman colony where Scipio Africanus chose voluntary exile and wished to be buried.
- Museums
Il Torrione (Museo Civico Giovanni Maltese)
Forio (NA)
Built in 1480 to spot Saracen sails, this cylinder of tufo (volcanic tuff) became four centuries later the home-studio of the sculptor Giovanni Maltese, who lived here into the twentieth century. Today his sculptures still inhabit the tower that once had to defend Forio from pirates.
VillagesCentro storico di Forio
Forio (NA)
The alleys of Forio are not crooked by chance: they were designed to confuse Ottoman corsairs, a labyrinth that stole precious minutes from the escape. To walk them today is to get lost on purpose, just as they were meant to.
- Sacred art
Basilica di Santa Maria di Loreto
Forio (NA)
The mother church of Forio, with its majolica onion-domed bell tower, holds the canvases the people of Forio saved from raids by hiding them in the caves. Inside, gold and marble tell of a village that lived on wine and on fear.
- Sacred art
Chiesa di Santa Maria Visitapoveri
Forio (NA)
Born as a confraternity that buried the poor and watched over the dying, Visitapoveri hides behind a sober façade the frescoes of Alfonso Di Spigna and eighteenth-century pews polished by centuries of elbows.
- Free beaches
Spiaggia della Chiaia (Forio)
Forio (NA)
The town's beach, where the people of Forio walk down from the alleys with a towel under their arm. At sunset the sun drops straight into the sea before the Torre del Soccorso.
- Free beaches
Cava dell'Isola
Forio (NA)
The only truly free beach on Ischia: no sunbeds, no rows of umbrellas, just dark sand and young people who stay in the water until eight in the evening, because here the sun dies in the sea and not behind the mountain.
- Views & panoramas
Punta Caruso
Forio (NA)
A spur of black lava plunging into a sea that shifts from turquoise to ink blue within three metres of depth. No sand: you climb down from the rocks, as the islanders have always done.
- Free beaches
Spiaggia di San Francesco
Forio (NA)
Pale sand beneath the Zaro cliffs, with the little church of San Francesco standing guard. It's the beach Forio goes to when it doesn't feel like climbing the steps.
- Views & panoramas
Faro di Punta Imperatore
Forio (NA)
Built in 1884, 160 metres above the sea, it is one of the tallest lighthouses on the Tyrrhenian. You climb up on foot from Via Costa, and at a certain point the island's sounds vanish: only the wind and your own breath remain.
Views & panoramasScoglio della Nave
Forio (NA)
A rock that, seen from the lighthouse, looks like a stone sailing ship that will never make port. For centuries the fishermen of Panza have used it as a landmark for finding their way home.
- Museums
Villa La Colombaia (Museo Luchino Visconti)
Forio (NA)
Here Luchino Visconti wrote, quarrelled and hid from the world, among the holm oaks of Zaro and a view that slips straight into his films. The director wanted to be buried here: the park is still his, more than the villa.
- Nature & hiking
Punta Cornacchia e Bosco di Zaro
Forio (NA)
It is the northernmost point of the island: a promontory of lava covered by a wood of holm oaks where Ischia ends and the channel to Procida begins.
- Sacred art
Chiesa di Santa Maria al Monte
Forio (NA)
Clinging to the mountainside at 400 metres, it is the church of the mountain farmers and the starting point of the trails to the Epomeo. From here the whole island is in view, and it looks tiny.
- In the water & diving
Chianare di Spadera
Forio (NA)
A coast of smooth flagstones and tiny coves below Punta Chiarito, where the tufo (volcanic tuff) splits into natural steps. Just above, archaeologists found a Greek farmstead buried by a landslide in the 6th century BC: the people fled and never came back.
Sacred artCattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta (Ischia Ponte)
Ischia (NA)
When the cathedral on the Castello was destroyed by English cannon fire in 1809, the bishops moved down to the valley and built a new one at the foot of the bridge. Beneath the present church survives the medieval crypt with frescoes of the Giottesque school.
- Museums
Museo del Mare (Palazzo dell'Orologio)
Ischia (NA)
Three floors of nets, ex voto, models and photographs of men who set out to sea and never returned. It is the museum the fishermen of Ischia Ponte built for themselves, in the clock tower palace that marked the rhythm of their departures.
- Museums
MUDIS — Museo Diocesano di Ischia
Ischia (NA)
Silverware, vestments and painted panels gathered from the island's churches after earthquakes and collapses. It is the storehouse of Ischia's sacred memory, and almost no tourist ever opens its doors.
- Views & panoramas
Scogli di Sant'Anna
Ischia (NA)
Three teeth of rock facing the Castello Aragonese. Every 26 July the sea here fills with lit-up boats and at the end the Castello burns amid the fireworks: it is the Festa di Sant'Anna, and for one night the island re-enacts its own blaze.
- Free beaches
Spiaggia dei Pescatori
Ischia (NA)
Boats hauled up on the sand between the sunshades, and the Castello Aragonese closing the horizon: it is still the working beach of the fishermen, who tolerate bathers between one net and the next.
- Free beaches
Spiaggia degli Inglesi
Ischia (NA)
A tongue of dark sand hemmed in between two headlands, reachable only on foot along a path that starts behind the harbour: almost no one gets there, and that is exactly the point.
- Nature & hiking
Grotta del Mago
Barano d'Ischia (NA)
The fishermen who took shelter here during storms swore they saw an old man with a silver beard sitting on the rocks, surrounded by three dancing women. Also called Grotta del Tempio del Sole, it was even sought by the Nazis, convinced it hid a doorway to the underworld.
History & archaeologyScavi e Museo di Santa Restituta
Lacco Ameno (NA)
Beneath the basilica you descend into a layered underground: Greek kilns, an early Christian necropolis, tombs and oil lamps. Above is the martyr saint who arrived from the sea on a boat without oars; below are the real dead, one stratum after another.
- History & archaeology
Monte Vico — acropoli di Pithekoussai
Lacco Ameno (NA)
On this promontory, in the 8th century BC, the Greeks of Euboea founded the first permanent settlement of the West. From here set out the alphabet that would become Rome's, and with it everything else.
- Castles
Torre di Casa Cumana
Casamicciola Terme (NA)
A sixteenth-century tower that survived the 1883 earthquake which in seconds razed Casamicciola and killed over two thousand people. It still stands there, while the town around it has been entirely rebuilt.
Sacred artChiesa di Sant'Antonio al Mortito
Casamicciola Terme (NA)
A small hillside church in a Casamicciola that has learnt to live with the ground that trembles and the mountain that slides down.
- Volcanoes
Monte Rotaro (cratere e fumarole)
Ischia (NA)
A crater 350 metres across and 127 deep, today covered in holm oaks and myrtle. Puffs of vapour still rise from the ground, and among the fumarole grows a plant that hardly grows anywhere else in Europe.
- Volcanoes
Cratere del Fondo d'Oglio
Ischia (NA)
A perfectly circular hollow hidden in the wood: inside they still grow vines, at the bottom of a volcano. Whoever descends cannot tell where they are until they look up.
- Hiking
Il Cretaio e il Bosco della Maddalena
Casamicciola Terme (NA)
The trail of the craters: you walk among holm oaks, strawberry trees and heather, and every bend is the rim of an extinct volcano. It is the green heart of Ischia, the one you cannot see from the sea.
- Views & panoramas
Montagnone
Ischia (NA)
The volcanic dome that looks straight down onto the port of Ischia, a crater in the middle of the inhabited island. From the top you see the Vesuvio ahead and Procida to the side, and under your feet there is lava.
- Nature & hiking
Pineta di Fiaiano (colata dell'Arso)
Ischia (NA)
This pinewood grows over Ischia's last eruption: in 1302 the lava of the Arso flowed all the way to the sea and wiped out everything in its path. Beneath the roots the flow is still there, black and intact.
- Hiking
Bosco della Falanga
Serrara Fontana (NA)
A chestnut wood full of houses carved inside the boulders: the farmers lived in the stone, and in a pit dug into the ground they stored the snow of the Epomeo to sell it in summer as ice. The wood is still there, the houses too, empty.
- Views & panoramas
Belvedere dei Frassitelli
Forio (NA)
A natural terrace at 600 metres above the vine terraces, with Punta Imperatore and the open sea beneath your feet. It is the balcony from which the farmers watched to see if the storm was coming.
- Nature & hiking
Pietra dell'Acqua
Serrara Fontana (NA)
A huge block of green tufo (volcanic tuff) with a basin carved into its top, which collects rainwater. No one knows for certain who cut it or why: some speak of an altar, some of a watering trough, some say nothing at all.
Sacred artEremo di San Nicola all'Epomeo
Serrara Fontana (NA)
A hermitage carved entirely out of the tufo just below the summit of the Epomeo. Here, in the eighteenth century, Giuseppe d'Argouth, commander of the Castello Aragonese, withdrew: after a life of arms he became a monk and died here, in a cell of rock.
- Hiking
Sentiero dei Pizzi Bianchi
Serrara Fontana (NA)
A canyon of white tufo (volcanic tuff) pinnacles that look like melted candles, carved by water over thousands of years. The path drops down among them and ends, almost as a joke, facing the sea of the Maronti.
- Hiking
Piano Liguori
Barano d'Ischia (NA)
The gentlest and most beautiful path on the island: you walk between rows of vines and cellars dug into the tufo (volcanic tuff), with the sea 300 metres below and Capri on the horizon. A few families still live here, and you can only get there on foot.
- Free beaches
Scarrupata di Barano
Barano d'Ischia (NA)
The name says it all: scarrupata, meaning collapsed. A wall of coloured clays fallen into the sea, and at the bottom a beach of big pebbles that its own inaccessibility saved from concrete. For the people of Ischia it is a place of the soul.
- Views & panoramas
Belvedere di Monte Cotto
Barano d'Ischia (NA)
The terrace from which the Maronti open up in full, from the Castello to the headlands of Sant'Angelo. Sunset without the crowd, and without a ticket.
- Sacred art
Chiesa di Santa Margherita Nuova
Procida (NA)
Built in the sixteenth century by Dominicans fleeing the Saracens, in the freezing winter of 1956 it collapsed in on itself when the great arches holding it up gave way. Only partly restored, it remains a shell hanging over the Corricella.
- Museums
Museo Civico di Procida "Sebastiano Tusa"
Procida (NA)
Named after the underwater archaeologist who died in the 2019 Ethiopian air disaster, it gathers what the sea around Procida has given back. It stands in the same complex from which, for two centuries, people looked out at the prison.
- Museums
Museo Casa di Graziella
Procida (NA)
A reconstruction of a Procida house for Graziella, the girl invented (or perhaps not) by Lamartine, who fell in love with her and let her die of grief in his novel. Every year Procida still elects a Graziella: a literary ghost the island cannot give up.
- Views & panoramas
Punta Pizzaco
Procida (NA)
The headland from which you can see Ischia on one side, Capri on the other and the whole Gulf in between. At sunset it is the best spot on Procida, and almost nobody climbs up here.
- Views & panoramas
Punta Solchiaro
Procida (NA)
The island's southernmost point, a balcony of tufo (volcanic tuff) over Vivara and the channel of Procida. The wind here never stops.
- Street art
Cimitero di Procida
Procida (NA)
A cemetery made of little domes and small white houses: the same round volumes as the homes of the living, just below. On Procida even the dead live in a miniature version of the town.
- Free beaches
Spiaggia di Ciraccio
Procida (NA)
The longest beach on Procida, dark sand beneath cliffs of yellow tufo (volcanic tuff), and the lighthouse on the horizon. Walk a hundred metres and you leave everyone behind.
- Free beaches
Spiaggia delle Grotte e Scoglio Cannone
Procida (NA)
Below a wall of tufo hollowed out with man-made caves once used as boat shelters, with the Scoglio Cannone planted in front like a sentry. You get there down a stairway that seems never to end.
Sacred artChiesa di Santa Maria della Pieta'
Procida (NA)
The church that greets whoever lands at Marina Grande, with the Madonna the sailors saluted before leaving and thanked on their return. When they returned.
- Views & panoramas
Belvedere Elsa Morante
Procida (NA)
Dedicated to the writer who, in L'isola di Arturo, made Procida an island of solitude and absent fathers. From here you look at the sea exactly as Arturo looked at it: waiting for someone.
- History & archaeology
Ipogeo dei Cristallini
Napoli (NA)
Ten metres beneath a building in the Sanità, four Greek burial chambers from the 4th century BC, with funerary beds carved into the tufo (volcanic tuff) and the colours still bright. Open to the public only since 2022, after two hundred years of silence.
- History & archaeology
LAPIS Museum — Acquedotto Augusteo del Serino
Napoli (NA)
Beneath the oldest basilica in Naples you descend into the aqueduct that Augustus had brought all the way here from the springs of Serino, and into the shelters where the city hid from the bombs.
- Museums
Museo del Sottosuolo
Napoli (NA)
Cisterns, tunnels and wells under Piazza Cavour, where the munaciello (little monk of Neapolitan lore) is not a fairy tale but the trade of those who worked down here: small, hooded, always in the shadows.
- History & archaeology
Neapolis Sotterrata (San Lorenzo Maggiore)
Napoli (NA)
Beneath the cloister you walk along a real Greco-Roman street: the macellum, the bakers' shops, the laundry. The Neapolis of the 1st century, frozen beneath your feet.
- Museums
MUSA — Museo di Anatomia Umana
Napoli (NA)
Skeletons, foetuses in formalin, bodies petrified with Giuseppe Aloe's nineteenth-century method. One of the most striking anatomical collections in Europe, inside a former monastery, and almost nobody knows it.
- Museums
Museo delle Arti Sanitarie e Farmacia degli Incurabili
Napoli (NA)
Surgical instruments that look like torture tools, the lazaretto ward, and the most beautiful eighteenth-century pharmacy in Europe: carved wood, majolica jars, and a poison jar with an inscription that chills you.
Sacred artArche Aragonesi di San Domenico Maggiore
Napoli (NA)
On the gallery of the sacristy, lined up like a motionless procession, forty-two wooden coffins covered in velvet: inside them lie the Aragonese kings, mummified, in their sixteenth-century clothes.
- Sacred art
Santa Maria la Nova e la "tomba di Dracula"
Napoli (NA)
In the cloister stands a tomb with a dragon carved between two sphinxes. Since 2014 some swear that Vlad the Impaler lies inside, buried here by his daughter. Historians shake their heads. The dragon, though, is right there.
- Sacred art
Basilica di San Severo fuori le mura e il Figlio Velato di Jago
Napoli (NA)
In the chapel of the Bianchi, a marble child sleeps beneath a veil of stone: Jago's contemporary answer to the Cristo Velato, a stone's throw from the oldest catacombe (catacombs) in the city.
- Nature & hiking
Cimitero degli Inglesi (Santa Maria della Fede)
Napoli (NA)
The old non-Catholic cemetery of Naples, where the English, the Protestants and the foreigners without a church ended up. Closed in 1893, today it is a public garden where the gravestones surface among the trees.
Sacred artChiesa di Santa Maria del Pianto
Napoli (NA)
Built in 1657 over the mass graves of the plague that in a single year carried off half of Naples. Below lies the Grotta degli Sportiglioni: the tufo quarries where the plague victims were thrown by the thousand.
CastlesPalazzo Serra di Cassano — il portone chiuso dal 1799
Napoli (NA)
On 20 August 1799 Gennaro Serra di Cassano was executed in Piazza Mercato for the Repubblica Napoletana. His father had the palace's monumental door barred. It has never been reopened since.
CastlesPalazzo Penne — il patto col diavolo
Napoli (NA)
Antonio Penne wanted his palace built in a single night, and asked the devil for it in exchange for his soul. Then he cheated him with an impossible clause. The quills carved on the façade since 1406 are still there as a reminder.
CastlesVilla Ebe e le Rampe Lamont Young
Napoli (NA)
Lamont Young dreamed of a Naples crossed by canals and underground railways. Nobody listened. In 1929 he shot himself inside this neo-Gothic castle built for his wife Ebe. In 2000 an arson fire devoured its interiors.
CastlesCastello Aselmeyer
Napoli (NA)
A Tudor manor with turrets and mullioned windows, planted in the middle of Corso Vittorio Emanuele: Lamont Young's other English dream, built for British tourists who never came.
CastlesTorre Palasciano
Napoli (NA)
A Florentine tower rising on the Capodimonte hill: it was wanted by Ferdinando Palasciano, the surgeon who cried "the wounded are sacred" and anticipated the Red Cross. They say his ghost still leans out to admire the bay.
Nature & hikingPalazzo Venezia e il suo giardino segreto
Napoli (NA)
From 1412 to 1797 this was the embassy of the Republic of Venice in Naples. You step through the door on Spaccanapoli, climb a ramp and find yourself in a hanging garden carved into the tufo (volcanic tuff), with a little Pompeian pavilion and not a tourist in sight.
Street artFontana della Sirena (Piazza Sannazaro)
Napoli (NA)
Rejected by Ulysses, the siren Partenope let herself die and the sea laid her on this shore: from her the city took its name. Here she is in marble, lyre in hand, on a rock of horses, lions and dolphins.
- Street art
Murale di Maradona di Jorit (Taverna del Ferro)
Napoli (NA)
On the blind wall of a social-housing block, Maradona watches over the neighbourhood from above: a giant secular icon painted where the city ends and nobody expects beauty.
- Street art
Murale del Che Guevara di Jorit (San Giovanni a Teduccio)
Napoli (NA)
Che Guevara looks at Maradona from one end of the neighbourhood to the other, as tall as a building. Two secular saints on the social housing of San Giovanni.
Street artParco dei Murales di Ponticelli
Napoli (NA)
Eight giant murals on the walls of social housing, all dedicated to childhood: from Jorit's Roma girl to play, to mothers, to fear that can be healed. An open-air museum where nobody buys a ticket.
Street artMurales di Jorit a Piscinola-Scampia (Pasolini, Angela Davis, De Andre')
Napoli (NA)
You come out of the metro and Pasolini is waiting for you, as tall as a building, next to Angela Davis and De André. Scampia told by those who live there, not by those who use it as a set.
- Museums
Museo Hermann Nitsch
Napoli (NA)
In a former power station: the blood-soaked canvases, the vestments and the instruments of Hermann Nitsch's Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries. This is not art for everyone: it is a rite.
MuseumsMuseo Civico Gaetano Filangieri
Napoli (NA)
Armour, porcelain, paintings and the library of a collector prince, in a Renaissance palace that in the nineteenth century was taken apart stone by stone and rebuilt thirty metres further along.
- Museums
Il Cartastorie — Museo dell'Archivio del Banco di Napoli
Napoli (NA)
Eighty kilometres of shelving holding the records of the oldest banking archive in the world: inside are the payments to Caravaggio, the debts of noblemen, five centuries of Neapolitan lives. The pages light up and tell their stories.
MuseumsMuseo Duca di Martina — Villa Floridiana
Napoli (NA)
Six thousand pieces of decorative art — Meissen porcelain, ivories, corals — in a white villa built by a king for his morganatic wife, at the top of a park looking over the bay.
MuseumsVilla Pignatelli
Napoli (NA)
A neoclassical villa left exactly as it was: the halls, the library, the little red drawing room. And, in the annexe, the carriage museum — with the park all around, in the middle of Chiaia's traffic.
- Museums
Musei universitari delle Scienze Naturali
Napoli (NA)
In the baroque halls of the Collegio dei Gesuiti: giant crystals donated by the Bourbons, whale skeletons hanging from the ceiling, skulls, mummies and foetuses in display cases. It costs about the price of one and a half coffees.
- Museums
MuSA — Museo dell'Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte
Napoli (NA)
The first observatory of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with its nineteenth-century brass telescopes, on a terrace overlooking the whole of Naples. On some evenings you really do watch the stars.
- Museums
Museo della Fondazione Nunziatella
Napoli (NA)
Inside the oldest military school in Italy, the eighteenth-century church is a jewel of marble and stucco that almost nobody sees — and from here came both the royalists and the revolutionaries of 1799.
Sacred artChiostro di San Marcellino e Festo
Napoli (NA)
A monastic cloister open on one side — an extremely rare thing — that suddenly gives onto the roofs of Naples, the sea and Vesuvius. At its centre, a baroque fountain with dolphins. And it is free.
- Hiking
Salita del Petraio
Napoli (NA)
Five hundred steps dropping from the Vomero down to Chiaia along an ancient watercourse, among bassi (ground-floor homes), washing lines, cats and little gardens. At every turn the bay reappears, and there is not a single tourist.
Views & panoramasParco Urbano ed Eremo dei Camaldoli
Napoli (NA)
The roof of Naples, 458 metres. From here, in a single glance: Vesuvius, the Campi Flegrei, Capri, Ischia, Procida and the Monti Lattari. Behind you, a hermitage of 1585 where nuns still live.
Views & panoramasPontile Nord di Bagnoli
Napoli (NA)
Nine hundred metres of concrete running out into the sea: it was the Italsider pier, where the steel was loaded. Today you walk out over the bay, with Nisida ahead and the chimneys behind. At sunset it feels unreal.