Naples gets called chaotic by people who only walked the bottom of it. The historic centre is a Greek grid — three long streets running dead straight east to west, crossed at right angles — and it is one of the most legible old towns in Europe. What confuses people is that the city also climbs six hundred metres above that grid, and the two halves barely acknowledge each other.
Learn the funiculars. There are four, they run every ten minutes, they cost what a bus costs, and they turn a brutal climb into ninety seconds of looking at somebody’s washing through a window.
The bay from Vomero. Everything in the lower half of this photograph is walkable. Photo: Kelly.
Up, along, down
- Up on the Centrale line from Augusteo.
- Along Vomero: the Certosa di San Martino, the terrace beside it, and a neighbourhood that feels like a different and much calmer city.
- Down on the Montesanto line, which lands you at the top of the Spanish Quarter and lets you walk the rest of the way.
The Spanish Quarter is not somewhere to be brave about. It is somewhere to be normal about: walk in, look up, buy something, walk out.
One thing to book
The underground city, the Bourbon tunnel, or the catacombs — pick one, not three. They make the same excellent point, which is that this place has as much beneath it as on top, and you will have stopped being amazed by the third.
