Tours in Napoli

Naples is the loudest of the big Italian cities. People take to it in an hour or never. The historic centre is a UNESCO site and a working neighbourhood at once, with laundry over the alleys and scooters in them. Pizza was invented here, and the rules for it are written into law.

What the city itself holds, before anyone drives you out of it:

• Spaccanapoli. The straight Greek-era street that splits the old town, and the church-dense blocks either side of it.
• The Archaeological Museum. Where nearly everything portable from Pompeii and Herculaneum actually is.
• Street food. Fried pizza, sfogliatella and taralli, sold from doorways rather than restaurants.
• Underground Naples. Greek quarries turned Roman aqueduct and then wartime shelter, forty metres down and entered from the centre.

The catalogue is mostly about leaving. Naples is the mainland gateway to the archaeology and the coast, and its two big days run on land. Pompeii and Herculaneum lie twenty minutes out by train, sold together and often with Vesuvius added.

The Amalfi run goes by minivan through Sorrento, Positano and Amalfi, ten hours with the coast road both ways. Boats exist here too. But the sea belongs to the peninsula.

Practical

• Pompeii. Forty-four hectares with almost no shade. Water, hat, and closed shoes for the basalt paving.
• Vesuvius. The summit path shuts in bad weather with no warning, and the crater is closed when the wind is up.
• Trains. The Circumvesuviana is cheap, slow and crowded, and it is the pickpocket line. Watch bags at Garibaldi.
• Amalfi by road. Ten hours door to door, most of it on switchbacks. Not the day for anyone prone to car sickness.
• Cash. Street food and the small places take nothing but cash.
• Pizza queues. The famous places do not book. You take a number and wait on the street, often an hour.