Naples has metro stations that appear on lists of the most beautiful in the world, and a city that plenty of guidebooks still treat with condescension. Both facts say more about the guidebooks than about Naples.
The network is three metro lines with 38 stations plus four funiculars, which here are not a curiosity but daily transport: Naples has its centre down by the sea and half a million people living up on the Vomero hill.
Line 1 is the one you will use: it curves up from the old centre to Vomero and carries on north, and it is the one with the famous “art stations”. Line 2 is really a stretch of railway crossing the city east to west, and the short line 6 serves Mergellina and Fuorigrotta.
What the metro does not cover is the heart of the old centre: Spaccanapoli and Via dei Tribunali are walked, and there is no other way. Nor is there a better one: that is the street plan of the Greek city, twenty-five centuries old.
And there is a fourth piece: the Circumvesuviana, the regional train out of Garibaldi towards Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Sorrento coast. It is not metro and it is not comfortable, but it is why a lot of people come.
Pompeii included, because skipping it would be absurd, but without letting it eat the trip: the city itself has far more to it than people give it credit for.
Everything above you can do on your own with this page open. This other thing we build for you: the same idea as always — you do not know what you got until the day before — applied to Naples.
You choose where you fly from and where you are going, and we tell you what the adventure costs and roughly what getting there would cost. Flights and accommodation you book yourself: we are not a travel agency and we do not want to be.
Two operators share the city — ANM for the urban metro and the funiculars, Trenitalia for line 2 — and the tickets reflect that: there is an urban one and an integrated one.
With the day ticket you stop thinking about it: metro, funicular and bus included for four and a half euros. It is the obvious buy for a day of Vomero plus centre.
If you want it line by line — which stations each one has, what is around every stop and how to work out a specific journey — we have all of it at our guide to the Naples metro. It is one of the sites we publish ourselves, and it is free.
Capodichino is only seven kilometres from the centre, which is a huge advantage and also the reason there is no train.
Three full days: one for the old centre and the museum, one for Vomero and the sea, and a third for Pompeii or Herculaneum. With four you can add an island or the Sorrento coast.
The ANM single ticket is €1.50 and covers metro, bus and funiculars; the integrated TIC ticket, which adds Trenitalia line 2, is €1.70. The day ticket is €4.50.
On the Circumvesuviana from Garibaldi station to Pompei Scavi, about 35 minutes. The ticket is separate from the urban one and the trains are basic: do not count on air conditioning in August.
The tourist centre and the neighbourhoods listed here are walked without trouble. What there is, is pickpocketing in crowded places and on the Circumvesuviana; wearing your bag on the front for those trips solves most of it.
Yes, and it fits in half a day: bus to the car park and about twenty minutes up to the crater rim. You need to book the ticket in advance and wear closed shoes.
This is what we do when we travel. The other thing we do is build adventures where you do not know which activity you got until the day before.
