NAPLES · ITALY
Pompeii, pizza, and the bay below Vesuvius.
Pompeii, Herculaneum and the crater of Vesuvius, the catacombs and the Veiled Christ under the old town, the city where pizza was born, and the boats out to Capri and the Amalfi Coast. Every good day in Naples, and every road out of it.
Only here
Three things you can only do in Naples.
Old towns and good food turn up all over Italy. Walking a Roman city the ash preserved whole, descending into the aqueducts beneath the streets, and standing over a marble veil no one believes is stone do not.
Frozen in 79 AD
Pompeii
A whole Roman city caught mid-step and sealed under volcanic ash for seventeen centuries. You walk the original stone streets past bakeries, bathhouses, frescoed villas and the plaster casts of people in their last moment. Nowhere else lets you stroll through the ancient world this completely.
- 1 Pompeii: Entry Ticket and Guided Tour with an Archaeologist
- 2 Pompeii: Entry Ticket with Optional Audio Guide
- 3 Pompeii: Small Group Tour with an Archaeologist
The city below the city
Naples Underground
Forty metres beneath the old town runs another Naples: Greek tunnels, a Roman aqueduct, quarries the Bourbons turned to passages and Neapolitans sheltered in during the war. You go down by candle-narrow stair into a hush the traffic above never reaches. A city stacked on its own history.
- 1 Naples: Naples Underground Entry Ticket and Guided Tour
- 2 Naples: Spanish Quarters Underground Guided Tour
- 3 Naples: The Bourbon Tunnel Guided Tour with Entrance Ticket
One impossible sculpture
The Veiled Christ
In the Sansevero Chapel lies a marble Christ draped in a veil so fine you can read the wounds through the cloth, all carved from a single block in 1753. Visitors stand and refuse to believe it is stone. The strangest, most beautiful thing in a city full of both, and it has never left Naples.
- 1 Naples: Downtown Tour with Veiled Christ & St Clare Tickets
- 2 Naples: Sansevero Chapel Ticket and Guided Tour
- 3 Naples: San Lorenzo Maggiore and Neapolis Sotterrata Ticket
Start here
The one almost everyone books first.
If a Naples trip is built around a single ticket, more often than not it is this one.
Where most people start
Naples's Most Popular Tours
Pompeii, Vesuvius, the Amalfi Coast and the catacombs. The days most travellers come to Naples for.
Where to begin
The days a Naples trip is built around.
Pompeii and Vesuvius, the Amalfi Coast and Capri, the pizza of the old town and the ruins of Herculaneum. The handful of days most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The big day out
How to do Pompeii.
It is the one site nearly everyone comes for, and there are three honest ways to do it. Pick by how much of the day you want to give it, and whether you pair it with the volcano or the coast.
Pizza & street food
Pizza was invented on these streets.
The Margherita was born here, and the city still does it best: a 60-second blister in a wood oven on Via dei Tribunali. Around it, a whole street kitchen: pizza fritta folded in paper, a cone of fried seafood, a custard-filled sfogliatella still warm, espresso knocked back standing up. The old town is meant to be eaten walking.
Read the guide: the best food tours in Naples →South of the bay
The most beautiful drive in Italy.
An hour past Naples the land buckles into cliffs and the SS163 starts to wind: Positano spilling down to the sea, Amalfi’s cathedral steps, Ravello’s gardens above the water. Most day trips run it by minibus with a driver who knows the bends, or by ferry from Sorrento when the road is full.
See all Amalfi Coast day trips →The bay
The whole city lives under the volcano.
Naples wraps around one of the great bays of the world, with Vesuvius standing over the rooftops and Capri low on the horizon. From the lungomare the view is famous; from the deck of a boat it is better still, the painted waterfront and the castle and the cone of the volcano all lined up at once.
Boat tours on the bay →Capri day trip
The island the emperors never left.
An hour by ferry across the bay, Capri rises straight out of the sea in white cliffs and the Faraglioni rocks. Row into the Blue Grotto and the water lights up an unreal electric blue from below; take the chairlift to the top of Monte Solaro for the whole Gulf of Naples at your feet. Tiberius ran the Roman empire from up here, and you can see why he stayed.
- 1 From Naples: Gulf of Naples & Capri Sightseeing Boat Tour
- 2 From Naples: Capri Guided Tour with Ferry Tickets & Minibus
- 3 From Naples: Capri and Anacapri Small Group Tour + Ferry
Plan by distance
Pick how far you want to go today.
Naples is the base for the whole bay. Stay in the old town for a day, hop an hour down the line to the ruins and the volcano, or give a full day to the coast and the islands.
In the city
Stay in Naples.Spaccanapoli end to end, the catacombs and the Veiled Christ, the undercity of aqueducts and a pizza on Via dei Tribunali. Days you never leave the old town.
An hour out
Out to the ruins.Pompeii, Herculaneum and the crater of Vesuvius, all a short hop down the Circumvesuviana line. Gone after breakfast, back in time for dinner.
A full day there and back
Down the coast.Sorrento, Positano and the Amalfi cliff road, or the ferry across to Capri and the Blue Grotto. The big days that need an early start.
The other buried city
Skip the crowds at Herculaneum.
The same eruption that buried Pompeii drowned Herculaneum in a deeper, hotter flow that carbonised wood instead of burning it. The result is uncanny: upper floors, balconies, even furniture and a doorframe still in place. It is smaller, quieter and far less crowded than its famous neighbour, and many travellers leave saying they liked it more.
See all 38 Herculaneum tours →By place
The city, and the roads out of it.
The old town for the churches and the pizza. Pompeii and Herculaneum for the ruins. Vesuvius for the crater. The Amalfi Coast for the cliff road. Capri for the island and the Blue Grotto.
By activity
Pick what kind of day you want.
A guide if you want the history told well. Skip-the-line if you want straight in. A food tour if you want to eat the old town. A boat if you want the bay from the water.
Plan it
Three days that cover the essentials.
First time in Naples? Here is how three days plays out without a wasted hour.
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