The Real Soul of Italy Naples

See, Naples and die are the famous words which showcase the richness of Napoli, a chaotic city whose gritty appearance belies the warmth of its residents. This gem in the south of Italy is unapologetically authentic and it's probably one of the most unique places to visit in Europe. Birthplace of the modern pizza, in this travel guide we're going to show you Naples' best hidden gems, top attractions and exactly what makes Napoli so special. This is a place where nothing is rushed and everything runs at its own pace. Napoli also boasts over two millennia worth of history. In times gone by, everyone wanted a slice of Naples. From the ancient Greeks who founded the city as Neopolis, i.e. New City, to the Spanish who left their own mark and the eventual unification of Italy in the 1860s, Napoli has seen a lot of history but one thing is clear, it has always remained distinctly Neapolitan. When in Naples, you'll want to do as the Neapolitans do and so we started out our day with a classic local pastry, the Sfogliatella. The Cortieri Spagnoli was created in the 16th century by the Spanish. Today it comprises of a meadow of very narrow streets, you'll see lots of scooters around here, people hanging their laundry up. This is also where you'll find the Maradona mural and lots of other street art. Football is more than just a sport in Napoli, it's a way of life. It's the second religion of the city and Maradona can be found around every corner. Some of the most famous Maradona highlights in the city include a bar dedicated to him, a larger than life mural and, very close to that, an entire museum dedicated to Maradona. This area is where you'll find the basso or bassi in the plural and these are ground floor dwellings where the house really connects to the street because you'll have a window which opens directly onto the street as well as a door. This is just an example of the fact that home and public really merge together here in Naples. Naples is pretty hilly and so if you're like me then one of the first things you want to do in the city is to climb up to a viewpoint to get an idea of how this southern Italian gem is laid out. Castel Sant'Elmo is a medieval castle atop of the Romero hill. It's now been transformed into a museum which you can pay to visit but just outside you'll find this amazing viewpoint where you can get a bird's eye perspective of Napoli. In the same area you'll find the church and museum dedicated to San Martino. Here you can visit some cloisters, again you do have to pay to visit and right outside is this amazing view. When it comes to the culinary scene of Napoli the truth is that while you can find some of the best food anywhere in Italy you can also fall into tourist traps. I personally recommend heading to one of the many lunchtime only trattorias scattered across the city where pasta is served by the plateful for just a few euros and the menu of the day is always written on a whiteboard. Pignesecca market is where you can go to get a real slice of Neapolitan life. Here you can find all kinds of fresh produce vendors who have been selling their wares in this spot since the 17th century. The Piazza del Plebiscito is named for the plebiscite. On the 21st of October 1860 Naples voted to join the unification of Italy and this square is named for it. The square itself was actually built in the first half of the 19th century and is decorated with rocks from Vesuvius. Today you can enjoy the square, I think it's over 20,000 meters in size, it's massive. You can also see a number of the rulers in statues on the other side of the square, they represent everything from French rulers to Spanish rulers and of course Italy's first king who's right at the end holding a sword to the air. From the Piazza del Plebiscito you can actually see one of the grandest buildings in Naples, it's the Galleria Umberto I and this was built between 1897 and 1890 during a period called the Risanimento. It was at this time after the unification of Italy that it was decided that grandiose buildings would be constructed all over Naples. This period lasted all the way until World War I. The craziest thing here is crossing the road. Every time you cross the street here it honestly feels like you're taking your life into your own hands. There's scooters dodging in and out of people, there's the cars converging, there's no lanes painted on the streets and we actually have a great view of a pedestrian crossing right from our balcony in our hotel so I'll show you what it looks like now. This is Europe's most densely populated city, there's hardly any green spaces or parks meaning that the streets themselves often become extensions of one's home. For example you'll often see people's laundry hanging out, you'll see kids playing in the street, people playing ball games, all sorts of daily life actually takes place right here on the cobbled lanes. One of the coolest aspects of Naples is that little has actually changed in the street plan here since the ancient Greeks 2,000 years ago. One place you can see this is Bacchanapoli, this really famous street literally means Naples splitter and that's because from above it looks like the street is splitting the city in two. In a city dominated by small streets Piazza Dante is a bit of an unusual square, this really really large square is dominated by a statue of the poet Dante and it's also home to Vacca e Press which means I'm in a hurry in Neapolitan. This is widely believed to be the oldest fast food restaurant here in Napoli and dates back to the early 1900s. Antica Pizzeria Port'Alba is the oldest still in operation pizzeria in Naples. It was established all the way back in 1738 and it's widely believed to be the oldest pizzeria in the whole world. Naples doesn't have a huge metro system due to a variety of reasons but what it does have is some of the most beautiful metro stations in Europe. Toledo metro station is undoubtedly the most stunning of them all. As history is never too far away when it comes to Naples, the metro itself actually incorporates pieces of the Aragonese walls and as you descend further you are greeted with an installation that represents the sea. We've just headed to a local pastry shop to pick up a spogliatella, this is also known as a lobster tail and it's basically really thin sheets of which are warm from the oven still and filled with ricotta. So when we picked up our pastries the server actually asked do you want a hard cook or a soft cook and we weren't really sure about the difference. I'm sure they're both going to be very tasty, they're genuinely so hot from the oven still. So let's do a taste test. It's so good and really warm. Today we're going to be exploring the Centro Storico which is the historic city centre. A great place to start the exploration is actually here at the Porta Capuano which dates all the way back to the renaissance period. In fact these carvings date all the way back to 1484 although it's worth noting that the original Roman city walls wouldn't have extended this far, this was definitely a later medieval addition. The gate itself is very well preserved and leads us well onto our next destination. I say this a lot when we're exploring Europe but the real charm of Naples lies in discovering its little streets, soaking up the foodie scene because the food here is some of the best in all of Italy and meeting the locals. There isn't a great deal by way of activities and so you'll just want to spend two or three days here wandering the streets, you'll be walking a lot on the cobbled lanes and eating all of the food. There are over 500 churches in Naples but the grandest of them all has got to be the Cathedral which sits squarely in the Centro Storico. It's completely free to visit and is officially known as a Cathedral of the Ascension of Mary. Built between the 13th and 19th centuries, once inside you'll find all kinds of unique carvings and frescoes, it's truly a feast for the eyes. Nearby the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore is pretty fascinating thanks to the fact that the area it now stands on was a thriving centre of One of the most famous streets to visit in the old town is the Via San Gregorio Armeno. Here it's very famous because all the shops along the street sell nativity sets and not just religious ones, there are also lots of football figurines. If you come during the daytime then it's really cool because you can see lots of the artisans working in their workshops at the back This is the bust of Porcinella, he was created in the 17th century as part of a theatre play and he's since become somewhat of a symbol of Napoli because he's a bit of a thiever and quite cunning. Today this statue stands here in the Centro Storico, it was created in 2012 and it's said to be good luck to touch the nose. Of course you can't come to Naples without trying the famous specialty, the Margherita pizza. There's actually been laws in place about what constitutes a Napoletana pizza since 2004. There's three accepted varieties, the Margherita, the Marinara and the Extra Margherita. This one is just a classic one with buffalo mozzarella. The story goes it was actually invented in the 1880s when Queen Margherita visited Naples after the unification. This is meant to represent the Italian flag, so you've got the green with the basil, the white with the mozzarella and the red with the tomato. One thing that really surprises people when they come to Italy is that for the most part people eat their pizzas with a knife and fork, you don't really pick it up and eat it here and it's probably because it's a bit soggy if you do that. So even though this place had really good reviews online, I'm giving this a 7 out of 10 on the tourist trap scale because it really wasn't the best pizza we've had in Naples. The price we paid was also different from what was on the menu, so not great. Luckily we did actually manage to eat some pretty great pizzas while in the pizza capital. One of my personal favourites was actually a venue close to the stadium by the name of Antica Pizzeria di Gennaro. Here we got to see the pizza makers in action and to be honest, cooking Neapolitan pizza is a real art form in of itself. So one thing I do have to say about the Centro Storico is that it's way more touristic than the Quartieri Spagnoli. There we saw way more local residents, we saw people going about their daily life. Here it just feels like there's a lot of tourist traps, even though there's more churches and other attractions in this area, I do recommend seeing both things because they're very different from one another and in the Quartieri Spagnoli you'll definitely get a more authentic experience of what Naples is really like. Something to know about the coffee culture here is that if you take a coffee at the bar it's often cheaper than if you just sit down. The other thing to know is that coffees are very very short, they're very strong and they're served with a glass of water. You're meant to drink the water first because then you can savour the taste of the coffee afterwards. The bartender also explained to us that the coffee is very very hot when it's served and so in order to cool it down you have to take your spoon and you put a bit on the rim and then you cool down the coffee a bit and then you don't burn your tongue when you drink it. If you want to delve deeper into the history of Naples underground then you can actually go into many church crypts in this area for an extra fee. We're now going to show you footage of two churches, the church of Santa Lucella and the church of San Filippo and San Giacomo. The story behind these churches is actually quite fascinating. You see in the 1980s there was this huge earthquake that meant lots of churches in the area became very dangerous and you could no longer step foot in them. They were abandoned for close to 40 years until an association of private individuals who wanted to bring back the heritage of some of these churches came together and formed an association which came to renovate several of these spaces. I would say that you don't need to visit both of them, basically it's five euro per visit or you can pay eight euro to visit both. Unfortunately in one of the churches they refused to give us a tour in English or French even though that is advertised. It was still very interesting but both churches are very beautiful to look at and to be honest the tour we had in the church of San Filippo and San Giacomo was amazing. Our tour guide was so friendly and he gave us so much information that I don't think it was necessary to do both. You can only visit the church of Santa Lucella by guided tour and on this visit you'll be led right down to the crypt. Here you can see the skull with ears. Legend has it that in centuries gone by Neapolitans would come to pray to the skull hoping it was littening. The other church is actually free to the public and you only have to pay to visit behind the scenes. The tour was truly fascinating and we learned all about how the church was originally built in the 16th century to be associated with a nearby hospital for the poor. There are several sections to visit. First you get to see a close to the public room where many of the church's treasures are kept. Then you're led down to the basement where the remains of Roman walls can be seen. Finally you're taken to the crypt which was used for burials until the city outlawed burials within its walls for hygiene and safety reasons. One activity that's pretty popular but that we unfortunately don't have time to do today is to go to the Naples Underground. Naples has been quarried since antiquity when the ancient Greeks went down there to quarry things to build their temples and during World War II it was then used as a shelter. Today you can go down and explore the history. The tours last for around an hour. There are several companies that do it but I really don't think we have time and we don't have really the equipment to do the underground justice so we'll leave that for you to come to yourself. Naples is actually a very religious city and there's 52 patron saints. One of the most important is San Gennaro whose main church is the Duomo. We've also just come across this exhibition dedicated to the saint who was born in Naples or another town nearby in the latter half of the third century. Although some people in the travel group might feel like we've visited too many churches today, one final religious destination which we're going to be visiting is the Cloister of the Clarisses. This is particularly special because in 1742 someone added majolica tiles to the flooring and so it's very very beautiful and unique inside. The Cloister of Santa Chiara is probably one of the most beautiful and peaceful spots in the centre of Naples. It's even better if it's a sunny day but even if it's overcast like today you can enjoy the beautiful murals and all of the majolica tiles. It's also not that busy considering we're right in the heart of the Centro Storico just off of the Spacca Napoli. The complex is pretty large and so you'll probably want to dedicate an hour or two to admiring all of the murals, tiles and associated museum. It's pretty good value for money if you come here because it's seven euro per person. Not only do you get to see the cloisters but you get to see these ancient greek bath excavations and also a museum section. We then had a short break at our hotel before heading out in the evening to explore even more of Naples's famous attractions. There are two main castles in Naples. The one just behind me is the Castel Nuovo which means new castle though it finds its roots in the 13th century. What you see behind me was actually rebuilt during the 15th. Unfortunately it is temporarily closed. I believe they're building a new metro line right outside of it but I'm sure it will be all beautiful when it's finished. Ovo castle is the oldest castle here in Napoli. It dates all the way back to the 6th century BCE because this is the very spot on which the Greeks founded Neapolis. Today it sits on a peninsula There was once an island called Megaride. Today you can visit for a small fee and the views down here at the harbour are simply breathtaking especially at golden hour. When night falls you can truly get a feel for how large the bay of Naples is. Naples itself has a population of over 900,000 residents and at night if you head to the seafront you can enjoy thousands upon thousands of twinkling lights. The next day in search of even more authentic local cuisine we headed to a less touristic district close to the Salvatore Rosa metro station. We've come to this trattoria where they don't even have a menu they just propose a few options of the day. The food looks so good I just got the pasta tomato. I'm gonna try it. It's what we came to eat. We then spent the rest of the afternoon wandering over to the Vermero district which is full of trendy bars cafes and cobbled lanes. If you're planning a trip to Naples then I've actually written a whole guidebook all about Naples, Sorrento, the Amalfi coast and Ischia. Details on how to buy this can be found in the description box below. Otherwise thank you so much for watching and don't forget to like and subscribe for more Italy content. See you next week!