Naples travel guide

Naples is a city of limitless excitement and compelling contradictions. Difficult to define yet impossible to ignore, it is a classic city of the Mediterranean south: bold, blaring and enticing.

Theatrically set on a sweeping bay with brooding Vesuvius as its backdrop, Naples is the diva of the Italian south. Here grand baroque architecture sits comfortably amid Dickensian streets, citrus-filled cloisters provide refuge from noisy piazzas and imperious palaces exhibit priceless treasures while housewives bargain over the price of fake Gucci bags.

Like their city, Neapolitans can be a demanding lot, but you will find that they are also warm and friendly, enthusiastic consumers of life’s pleasures, both simple and sophisticated. It is they who create the theatre on the street. Naples is a place that some first-time visitors to Italy consider avoiding. They would be missing out.