At a Glance Naples Travel Guides | Naples | Trip Planner | At a Glance Naples

The grandest part of the city centres on the giant and slightly barren piazza del Plebiscito, with its curved colonnade opposite the Palazzo Reale. The vast imposing space, previously a car park, is these days dotted with kids playing football against the backdrop of Vesuvius, glimpsed between grand 17th- and 18th-century buildings. Behind the colonnade the hill of Monte di Dio supports one of Naples’ oldest residential areas, its washing hanging out to dry high above the narrow streets. Via Chiaia, running north of the hill, is one of Naples’ smartest shopping areas. Also here is the San Carlo opera house and two of Naples’ sombre castles: Castel dell’Ovo and Castel Nuovo.

Though the grandest of Naples’ monuments are mainly in Santa Lucia, this area is the heart of the city: its dark, narrow streets greasy, irregularly paved and overflowing with scooters, people and noise. Amongst a plethora of bars and restaurants, small shops sell everything from organic limoncello to electronic water features for nativity scenes. Fascinating churches and palazzi, many from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, sit beside, or on top of, occasional ancient remnants of 2000 years ago. Sprinkled into the chaos are the city’s inconceivably peaceful cloisters. The university is just to the south and the atmosphere here is generally predictably young and loud.

Partly pedestrianized via Toledo, Naples’ bustling high street, runs between piazza del Plebiscito and piazza Dante. To its west, the narrow streets of the Quartieri Spagnoli are one of the city’s poorest areas, and the Camorra heartland. There’s a fascinating market every day up via Pignasecca and towards piazza Montesanto, while via Toledo heads north to the Museo Archeologico, with its staggering collection of ancient statues, mosaics and erotica.

One of the poorer areas of Central Naples, both economically and in points of interest, this zone is one of Naples’ missed opportunities. Though right beside the sea, you can wander the dishevelled streets without ever being aware of its presence. Its highlight is the heaving Mercato di Porta Nolana.

Beyond the Museo Archeologico the road continues to the fine, green Parco di Capodimonte, where the Palazzo Reale di Capodimonte houses the Bourbon and the Farnese art collections. On a bus there you might not even notice Dickensian La Sanità, lying below, and bypassed by, the bridge built by the French in 1808. With the city’s thoroughfare passing above it, the architecture of La Sanità, a dense warren of narrow streets, seems to have been abandoned at the turn of the 19th century. It’s fascinating but far from peaceful – despite the fact that it’s also where for centuries Naples has buried its dead.

To the west of the centre the genteel Caracciolo seafront curves around to the yacht-filled marina of Mergellina, beyond which the exclusive residential area of Posillipo rises. Chiaia in particular is a more laid-back area of excellent bars, cafés and restaurants, and some pleasant green spaces, notably the Villa Comunale park.

This newer, cleaner part of town, up on a hill above the city, is rather like newer, cleaner parts of other Italian cities. For this reason Neapolitans are proud of it, and for the same reason you may be unimpressed. Amid the suburbia, via Scarlatti is a busy shopping street which Neapolitans enjoy wandering up and down, stopping at piazza Vanvitelli for coffee. More exciting are the Castel Sant’Elmo and the Certosa di San Martino, perched high above Naples with, between them, exceptional views and an excellent museum.

To the east, Pompeii, Herculaneum and Oplontis are extraordinary museum exhibits preserved by a now-slumbering Vesuvius. Further east the well-groomed Sorrento Peninsula has English tourists aplenty but also a wonderfully fecund landscape. To the west, the volcanic Campi Flegrei still bubble and steam amid more ancient remains. The islands of Capri, Ischia and Procida all have their own style: elegant, beautiful and ragged in turn. To the south, the spectacularly steep and winding Amalfi Coast has beaches and boutiques, while further afield Caserta is an impressive grand old pile and Paestum has more ruins still, in perhaps the most dramatic setting of them all.

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