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Chiaia
The first thing Mayor Luigi de Magistris did after his 2011 election was to banish traffic from the city's seafront. Strolling, skating, or biking along Via Caracciolo and Via Partenope with Capri, Mt. Vesuvius, and the Castel dell'Ovo in your sights is a favorite Neapolitan pastime.
Via Caracciolo, Naples, Campania, Italy
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Posillipo
Located at the top of Posillipo's hill, this small yet magical complex has a 1st-century villa and two amphitheaters; access is though the Grotta di Seiano, a 2,500-foot tunnel cut though the tufa rock over two millenia ago. Free guided tours (in Italian, book ahead) are given at 9:30 and 10:30, weekdays, with more detailed tours given at weekends. Evening concerts are often held here in the summer.
Discesa Coroglio 36, Naples, Campania, 80123, Italy
081-2301030-to book tours weekdays
Sight Details
Rate Includes: Free weekdays, €6 weekends
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Santa Lucia
The oldest castle in Naples, the 12th-century Castel dell'Ovo dangles over the Porto Santa Lucia on a thin promontory. Built atop the ruins of an ancient Roman villa, the castle these days shares its views with some of the city's top hotels. Its gigantic rooms, rock tunnels, and belvederes over the bay are among the most striking sights that Naples has to offer. Some rooms are given over to temporary art and photography shows.
You enter the castle through its main entrance, below its forbidding trio of cannons. On the right is a large picture of the castle in Renaissance times. Turn left and look through the battlements to the intimate Borgo Marinaro below. An elevator on the right ascends to the castle top, or you can also continue along the walkway overlooking the ramparts. The roof's Sala della Terrazze offers a postcard-come-true view of Capri. This is a peaceful spot for strolling and enjoying the views.
As for the castle's name, the poet Virgil is supposed to have hidden inside the villa an egg that had protective powers as long as it remained intact. The belief was taken so seriously that to quell the people's panic after Naples suffered an earthquake, an invasion, and a plague in quick succession, its monarch felt compelled to produce an intact egg, solemnly declaring it to be the Virgilian original.
Via Eldorado 3, Naples, Campania, 80121, Italy
Sight Details
Rate Includes: Free
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Toledo
The galleria was erected during the "cleanup" of Naples following the devastating cholera epidemic of 1884. With facades on Via Toledo—the most animated street in Naples at the time—the Liberty-style arcade with curvy glass and wrought-iron dome and vaulted wings, built between 1887 and 1890 according to a design by Emanuele Rocco, had a prestigious and important location.
Entrances on Via San Carlo, Via Toledo, Via Santa Brigida, and Via Verdi, Naples, Campania, 80133, Italy
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Toledo
This small square 300 yards up the hill from Via Toledo is a shrine to to Napoli's all-time favorite soccer player, Diego Maradona. "The hand of God, the head of Maradona," quoth the famous Argentina-born superstar after scoring a much-disputed World cup goal against England. This sentiment and its ability to mix the earthly and fallible with the divine is also peculiarly Neapolitan. The south wall is dominated by a mural of the Argentine giant featuring his original Swarovski diamond earring. Painted by fan Mario Filardi in 1990 when Napoli won their second league title, it was given an overhaul in 2016 with the face subsequently retouched by Argentine street artist Francisco Bosoletti (whose mural Iside, inspired by Pudicizia del Corradini in the Cappella Sansevero, is on the west wall). When Maradona passed away in 2020, fans gathered here to pay their respects, as well as at the city’s stadium (now renamed Stadio Maradona), and the square has now transformed from a crammed parking lot to a colourful museum for the footballing hero, with pilgrims leaving photos, scarves and gadgets in tribute. There is another giant mural of Maradona in the eastern suburb of San Giovanni a Teduccio, painted by Neapolitan-Dutch artist Jorit in 2017.
Via Emanuele de Deo 60, Naples, Campania, 80132, Italy
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Recommended Fodor’s Video
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Mergellina
An often overlooked sight in western Naples, the park is named for the poet Virgil and is reputedly his burial site. Not to be confused with the Parco Virgiliano, at the western end of the Naples suburb of Posillipo, the sign at the park's entrance indicates that not only (by legend) is Virgil's tomb here, but also the tomb-memorial of Giacomo Leopardi, the author of the evocative poem "L'infinito," who died during the 1837 cholera epidemic. As a safety precaution, victims of the disease were usually buried in mass graves, but the writer (and later politician) Antonio Ranieri, a close friend, arranged for this monument, which until 1939 was located elsewhere. From the Mergellina metro station, walk south to Salita della Grotta and turn right just before the church of Santa Maria di Piedigrotta; the park's entrance is just before the road tunnel.
Salita della Grotta 20, Naples, Campania, 80122, Italy
Sight Details
Rate Includes: Free, Closed Tues.
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Posillipo
Perched 500 feet above the Bay of Naples, this large urban park is worth the trip for its stunning vistas that face the islet Nisida with the formerly industrial area of Bagnoli stretching out below. A raised central area has a sports field where the Naples American Football team often trains.
Viale Virgilio, Naples, Campania, 80123, Italy
Sight Details
Rate Includes: Free
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Toledo
After spending time as a parking lot, this square was restored in 1994 to one of Napoli Nobilissima's most majestic spaces, with a Doric semicircle of columns resembling St. Peter's Square in Rome. The piazza was erected in the early 1800s under the Napoleonic regime, but after the regime fell, Ferdinand, the new King of the Two Sicilies, ordered the addition of the Church of San Francesco di Paola. On the left as you approach the church is a statue of Ferdinand and on the right one of his father, Charles III, both of them clad in Roman togas. Around dusk, floodlights come on, creating a magical effect. A delightful sea breeze airs the square, and most days one corner becomes an improvised soccer stadium where local youths emulate their heroes.
Piazza del Plebiscito, Naples, Campania, Italy
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Decumano Maggiore
An engaging complex of Renaissance architecture and sculpture, this church is named for its location during medieval times near the city trash dump, where refuse was burned and carbonized. The church's history starts in 1339, when the Neapolitan nobleman Gualtiero Galeota donated a few houses and a vegetable garden to Augustinian monks who ministered to the poor neighborhood nearby.
San Giovanni's dramatic piperno-stone staircase, with its double run of elliptical stairs, was modeled after a 1707 design by Ferdinando Sanfelice similar to other organ-curved stairways in Rome, such as the Spanish Steps. Cross the courtyard to the left of the main entrance and enter the rectangular nave. The first thing you see is the monument to the Miroballo family, which is actually a chapel on the opposite wall, finished by Tommaso Malvito and his workshop in 1519 for the Marchese Bracigliano; the magnificent statues in the semicircular arch immediately set the tone for this surprising repository of first-class Renaissance sculpture.
Dominating the skeletal main altar, which has been stripped of its 18th-century Baroque additions, is the 59-foot-tall funerary monument of King Ladislaus and Joan II, finished by Marco and Andrea da Firenze in 1428. A door underneath this monument leads to the Ser Caracciolo del Sole chapel, with its rare and beautiful original majolica pavement. The oldest produced in Italy, from a workshop in Campania, it shows the influence of Arab motifs and glazing technique.
The dating of the circular Caracciolo di Vico chapel, to the left of the altar, is the subject of debate. Usually given as 1517, with the sculptural decor complete by 1557, the design (often attributed to Tommaso Malvito) may go back to 1499 and thus precede the much more famous Tempietto in Rome, by Bramante, which it so resembles. Hanging to the right of the altar is the impressively restored 16th-century Crucifixion by Giorgio Vasari, and in the back chapel, some brightly colored frescoes by an anonymous 16th-century master, as well as an intriguing sculpture of a knight taking a nap in his armor. Because this great church is off the path of tour groups, you can absorb the ordered beauty of the decoration in peace.
Via San Giovanni a Carbonara 5, Naples, Campania, 80139, Italy
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Piazza Garibaldi
On the site of Naples's oldest church, it contains an altar where Saint Peter supposedly preached while in Naples. Enter by the side door on Corso Umberto I, and you'll find the altar in the vestibule at the back, along with a 16th-century fresco depicting the preaching scene. The church also houses two canvases by Luca Giordano. Descend into the labyrinthine crypt on Monday and Wednesday afternoons and Sunday mornings, where the first Christian community in Europe was founded and the first six saints of Naples are buried.
Via Santa Candida 4, Naples, Campania, Italy
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Porta Capuana
With museum-worthy paintings and sculptures on display, this church is a must-see of Naples. The Formiello in the name refers to the formali, the nearby underground aqueduct, which, according to history, the Aragonese also used to capture the town. The church and its dark piperno stone was designed for the Dominicans by the Tuscan architect Romolo Balsimelli, a student of Brunelleschi.
The side chapels are as interesting for their relics as they are for their art. In the Orsini chapel, are the elaborately framed remains of St. Vincent Martyr and other Dominican saints, while the fourth chapel displays some 20 skulls of the martyrs of Otranto, brought to Naples by King Alfonso in 1490 after the Ottoman sack of Otranto in 1480, when 813 Christians were executed for refusing to renounce their faith. This event is in the rather surrealistic altar painting of the beheading of Antonio Primaldo, whose decapitated body, through the strength of faith, stands upright to confound his Ottoman executioner.
In the fifth chapel, a cycle of paintings by Giacomo del Po depicts the life and afterlife of St. Catherine, while in the vault Luigi Garzi depicts the same saint in glory. Up in the faded dome painted by Paolo di Mattei, Catherine, together with the Madonna, implores the Trinity to watch over the city.
Piazza Enrico de Nicola 49, Naples, Campania, 80139, Italy
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Toledo
Sooner or later you'll wind up at one of the busiest commercial arteries, also known as Via Roma, which is thankfully closed to through traffic—at least along the stretch leading from the Palazzo Reale. Don't avoid dipping into this parade of shops and coffee bars where plump pastries are temptingly arranged.
Via Toledo, Naples, Campania, Italy
