Welcome to Naples(Napoli)!

I am leaving. I shall not forget Via Toledo, nor any other of the parts of Naples; to my eyes this city has no equal and is the most beautiful city in the universe.
Stendhal, 1817

Mysterious and fascinating, intriguing and passionate, chaotic and contradictory: this is Naples, (Napoli in Italian) , the great capital of the Mediterranean.

Moonlit nights, the sparkling atmosphere of popular feasts and the smell of the sea, all these have contributed to its fame.

While being a modern city it is still solidy linked to the traditions of the past. The city offers itself as a universe to be explored: its artistic heritage is immense.
Just beyond Naples are three of the best ancient Rome sights anywhere: the impressive ruins of Pompeii and Hercolaneum... and the brooding volcano that did them both in, Mount Vesuvius.
Twenty-five-hundred years ago, Neapolis (“new city”) was a thriving Greek commercial center. Today, it remains southern Italy’s leading city, offering a fascinating collection of museums, churches, and eclectic architecture.

This city is Italy in the extreme: its best (birthplace of pizza and Sophia Loren) and its worst (home of the Camorra, Naples’ “family” of organized crime).
Naples, Italy’s third-largest city, has almost no open spaces or parks, which makes its position as Europe’s most densely populated city plenty evident. Watching the police try to enforce traffic sanity is almost comical in Italy’s grittiest, most polluted, and most crime-ridden city. But Naples surprises the observant traveler with its impressive knack for living, eating, and raising children in the streets with good humor and decency.
The pulse of Italy throbs in Naples. Like Cairo or Bombay, it’s appalling and captivating at the same time, the closest thing to “reality travel” that you’ll find in Western Europe. But this tangled mess still somehow manages to breathe, laugh, and sing – with a captivating Italian accent.

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