Naples - Chiaia Mergellina and Posillipo Travel Guides | Naples | Sub Regions | Naples - Chiaia Mergellina and Posillipo

Head west from piazza del Plebiscito along the increasingly smart via Chiaia and you will find yourself in piazza dei Martiri, a focus point for the more up-market end of town which starts here and swings around through Chiaia along the Rada Caracciolo seafront to the yacht-filled marina and port of Mergellina and up the hill to Posillipo.

Chiaia is an area for wandering, shopping, eating and sitting at cafés watching the world go by. By night, life becomes more energetic as many of the city's smarter clubs and bars open their doors and well-dressed and wealthy young Naples spills out onto the streets among the potted plants. Surrounded by expensive 18th- and 19th- century residences, there is a park (Villa Comunale) with an aquarium, and a villa with a museum and gardens (Villa Pignatelli).

Along the seafront there's even a beach of sorts and the sea seems more present here than in the rest of the city – you can walk along beside it all the way from Castel dell'Ovo to the attractive Porticciolo di Mergellina (marina of Mergellina), where a cluster of restaurants and cafés creates a bustling atmosphere.

By the time you start to climb the hill into Posillipo, residential becomes presidential, and as the coast road heads southwest, much of the sea itself is unattainably at the bottom of very smart gardens and private drives. There are still occasional bits of coast you can reach along this exclusive stretch however, notably at Marechiaro.

Sights

Villa Comunale

May-Oct 0700-0000, Nov-Apr 0700-1000. Tram: 1 or 4.

The city’s biggest sea-level green space, this long park has a handsome bandstand, curving paths, palm trees, a long, wide paved avenue, clover, daisies and even some swings. Busy roads on either side do their best to spoil the peace, however, and this is more a place to promenade than to sunbathe. Attempts to sit on the grass may result in park wardens on bicycles ringing their bells and shaking their fingers at you.

Halfway along the park, across the road a dirty beach connects the seafront to a breakwater. However, the quantity of broken glass should put you off swimming before you even start to think about the cleanliness of the water. But the breakwater provides excellent views of the bay, and isn’t a bad place to sit, picnic and sunbathe.

Acquario

Villa Comunale 1, via Caracciolo, T 081-5833111. Tue-Sat 0900-1800, Sun 0930-1900. €1.50.

In the middle of the Villa Comunale, one of Europe’s oldest aquariums (perhaps even the oldest) is a centre of scientific study as well as a visitor attraction, and has over 200 species from the Bay of Naples. At the time of writing it was closed for renovation.

The liberating forces in 1944 were given a banquet which reputedly included the entire edible population of the aquarium.

Villa Pignatelli

Riviera di Chiaia, T 081-7612356. Tue-Sun 0830-1400. €3.87.

This grand villa, built in the 1820s, once belonged to the Rothschild family and was given to the Italian state in 1952. It has beautiful gardens as well as some magnificent rooms on the ground floor. Upstairs it contains the Banco di Napoli collection in the Museo Principe Aragona Pignatelli Cortes, a somewhat patchy selection of art from the Renaissance to the 20th century. The highlight is probably Gaspare Traversi’s comic 18th-century composition The Secret Letter. An 18th-century Gaspar van Wittel scene looking west over Chiaia is fascinating, but not for artistic reasons.

Porticciolo di Mergellina

The marina at the western end of via Caracciolo is an absorbing mix of smart yachts and tiny fishermen’s boats, and a great place for the evening passeggiata, with an excellent view of the city, Vesuvius, and, on a clear day, the whole of the Bay of Naples round to Capri. You can walk right out to the end of the breakwater and sit among the fishermen and lovers watching the city and Vesuvius turn more and more orange in the light of the setting sun.

The chalets, on the other side of the road from the marina, are a popular place to come for coffee, cakes and ice-cream. Chalet Ciro is the most famous, and has amazing cakes, but nearby Chiquitos does especially good ice-cream and has much smaller queues.

Parco Vergiliano a Piedigrotte

Salita della Grotta 20, Mergellina, T 081-669390. Mon-Sun 0900-1hr before sunset. Free.

Under the railway bridge to the left of the attractive church of Santa Maria di Piedigrotte, this park is a little oasis in the midst of traffic chaos, not to be confused with the Parco Virgiliano at the far western end of Posillipo. The tomb of the rather more recent poet Giacomo Leopardi (who died in a cholera outbreak in 1837) is also here, half way up. Of more interest is the Crypta Neapolitana, the world’s longest Roman road tunnel, which connected Naples to Pozzuoli and Baia. It’s closed but you can stare past the detritus to daylight at the far end, 603 m away. Steps up and around the top of the tunnel lead to Virgil’s Tomb, a strangely shaped building resembling a giant beehive. Whether it actually contains the his remains seems to be open to question, but you won’t hear many Neapolitans denying it.

Marechiaro

Bus 140 from Mergellina to the top of via Marechiaro, then a 20 minute walk down the hill, or catch rather infrequent bus 11.

This attractive collection of houses and restaurants by the seafront at Marechiaro has a romantic and villagey feel, and is certainly a different world from central Naples. Unless you’re hungry though, there’s not much to do except sit by the sea and look at the view.

Travel Guides | Naples | Sub Regions | Naples - Chiaia Mergellina and Posillipo
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