Naples

Naples is a big city in the south of Italy. It is beside a wide blue bay.

Behind the city stands a big mountain. It is a volcano called Vesuvius.

Naples is a port city in southern Italy and the capital of the Campania region. It curves around the Bay of Naples, with the volcano Vesuvius to the east.

Italy's statistics office, ISTAT, counted 909,013 people living in Naples on 1 January 2025. Only Rome and Milan had more people. Its old center, with streets laid out by the ancient Greeks, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Naples is the capital of Campania and one of the oldest cities in Europe. UNESCO describes it as a major port city in the center of the ancient Mediterranean world, whose present-day streets still keep the imprint of the successive cultures that shaped it, from Greek settlers to Bourbon kings.

ISTAT's register put the city's resident population at 909,013 on 1 January 2025, behind only Rome (2,747,290) and Milan (1,365,698) among Italian municipalities. The Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana notes how long Naples has been large: about 70,000 people in the 15th century and about 450,000 by the end of the 18th. The city spreads from the shore over the hills of Vomero and Posillipo.

Naples has old castles. One castle stands right beside the sea.

There is also a palace where kings once lived, and a grand theater for music.

Two castles guard the waterfront. Castel dell'Ovo stands on the shore and dates from the 1100s, when Normans ruled here. Castel Nuovo, the "new castle," was remodeled by the Aragonese kings who ruled Naples from the 1400s.

The Royal Palace, built in 1600, lines one side of the grand square called Piazza del Plebiscito. Beside it is the Teatro di San Carlo, an opera house founded in 1737. High on a hill above the city is the Certosa di San Martino, a monastery from the 1300s.

UNESCO's description of the Historic Centre reads like a timeline in stone. Castel dell'Ovo is one of the most substantial survivals from the Norman period. The Angevin kings (1265–1442) added Gothic churches and convents such as Santa Chiara and San Lorenzo Maggiore; the Aragonese then remodeled the defenses and street plan and rebuilt Castel Nuovo, largely in the Tuscan style. Spanish rule left the Royal Palace of 1600 on Piazza del Plebiscito.

The Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana adds that Castel Nuovo gained a triumphal arch under Alfonso the Magnanimous, and that the Teatro di San Carlo, founded in 1737 and rebuilt several times since, became the main stage of the Neapolitan school of music. The Certosa di San Martino, a Carthusian monastery of the 14th century enlarged in the 16th and 17th, overlooks the city from its hill.

Vesuvius is a volcano near Naples. It has been resting for a long time.

Scientists watch it carefully. There is a plan to help people stay safe.

Mount Vesuvius rises east of Naples, in an area where many people live. Its most famous eruption, in the year 79, buried the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Its last eruption was in 1944, and since then it has been resting while scientists watch it closely.

Italy's Civil Protection Department has a national plan to move people out of the most dangerous area, the "red zone," before any future eruption. Parts of three Naples districts, Barra, Ponticelli and San Giovanni a Teduccio, are inside it.

Vesuvius lies east of Naples in a densely populated area, which is why Italy's Civil Protection Department calls it one of the highest-risk volcanoes in the world. It is made of the remains of the older Mount Somma and a younger cone, the Gran Cono. The eruption of 79 AD, described by Pliny the Younger, destroyed Pompeii, Herculaneum (Ercolano) and Stabiae; the last eruption, in 1944, was a low-energy one. Since then the volcano has been quiescent, with gas vents in the crater and low seismicity, and INGV's Vesuvius Observatory monitors earthquakes, ground movement and gases; in October 2026 its alert level was green, the basic level.

The national emergency plan defines a red zone that pyroclastic flows could reach. It covers 25 municipalities in the provinces of Naples and Salerno, including parts of the Naples districts of Barra, Ponticelli and San Giovanni a Teduccio. There, the only safeguard is evacuation before an eruption, and each municipality is twinned with another Italian region or autonomous province that would host its people.

In Naples, some trains climb up steep hills. They are pulled up by cables.

Some underground stations were designed with art in mind.

Naples spreads over hills, and it has four funiculars, little railways that climb steep slopes. Three of them link the city center with the Vomero district, about 200 meters higher up.

The city's first metro line, Line 1, opened in 1993 and has grown in stages since, adding Toledo station in 2012. UrbanRail.net notes that special care was taken over the artistic design of its newer stations.

UrbanRail.net dates Naples' first metro line, the 'hill subway' now called Line 1, to 28 March 1993 (Vanvitelli to Colli Aminei). It was extended to Piscinola in 1995, down to the center in stages from 2001, and to Garibaldi in 2013, with Toledo station added on 17 September 2012 and Centro Direzionale on 1 April 2025; special emphasis was put on the artistic design of the newer stations. North of Vanvitelli the line climbs to 268 m at Policlinico.

Line 2, run by Italy's national railway, runs on the Rome–Naples Direttissima line, opened in 1925, and Line 6 reopened in 2024. Four funiculars serve the hills: Montesanto, Centrale and Chiaia climb to Vomero, about 200 m above the old town, and Mergellina climbs to Posillipo.

About 3,000 pizza makers work in Naples. They prepare the dough and bake it in a wood-fired oven.

Families in Naples make pizza at home, too.

In 2017, UNESCO added the art of the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo, or pizza maker, to its list of the world's living heritage. The art has four stages, from preparing the dough to baking it in a wood-fired oven, and the baker uses a spinning movement. UNESCO says about 3,000 pizza makers live and work in Naples, and families keep the art alive at home.

Naples also has a long musical tradition. In the 1700s it had four music schools, called conservatories.

UNESCO inscribed the art of the Neapolitan 'pizzaiuolo' in 2017 as a culinary practice in four phases, from preparing the dough to baking in a wood-fired oven, with a rotating movement by the baker. It names three kinds of bearers, the master pizzaiuolo, the pizzaiuolo and the baker, plus Naples families who practice it at home, and counts about 3,000 pizzaiuoli in the city. The Association of Neapolitan Pizzaiuoli runs yearly courses on its history, tools and techniques.

The Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana traces another strong tradition, music: four conservatories in the 18th century, and the Teatro di San Carlo of 1737 as the main platform of the Neapolitan school. The city is also a university center.