The crowded, chaotic and rubbish-ridden metropolis weaves a unique magic, writes Mike Van Niekerk.
My abiding thought 24 hours after arriving in Naples was, "why the hell did I come here? Why would anyone?"
Having glided into Garibaldi Station on the sleek, high-speed Frecciarossa, just under five hours from the well-mannered north Italian city of Milan, we walked out into a seemingly different country: chaotic, noisy, filthy and more than a little intimidating.
One of the many pizzerie on Via dei Tribunali.
People standing an arm's length apart shouted rather than spoke to each other. Drivers in cars that universally had crushed mudguards shouted and hooted at drivers in other cars.
Endless scooters threaded their way through impossible gaps in traffic, attracting hoots and shouts and, often enough, that peculiar hand language of the south, cupped hands rocking up and down in a plea for sweet mercy.
The outrageously charming taxi driver taking us to our Airbnb address managed to rip us off despite my every precaution and the street where he deposited us looked like an extension of the Neapolitan slums.
Not a great start. And yet a week later, as our Palermo-bound ferry rumbled out of the port into Naples Bay I looked back on the lights of the city with warmth and a tinge of sadness at leaving. Naples is a mad place but it is also one of the most colourful and entertaining I've ever been in.
You don't need to stay in Naples itself to see the most famous nearby attractions — Mt Vesuvius, Pompeii, Capri and the Amalfi Coast — you can park yourself in relative comfort in Positano or Amalfi and visit neighbouring sights on organised boat and bus tours. Of course, you'd miss uniquely Neapolitan pleasures such as strolling down Via dei Tribunali during the evening passeggiata, just one of the streets where thousands come out at the end of the day to stroll and to socialise, eat icecreams and do last-minute shopping.
Naples is famous for its slums, which are brilliantly pictured in Elena Ferrante's four-part Neapolitan Novels series, and more sensationally documented in Gomorrah, Roberto Saviano's exposure of the Neapolitan crime syndicate, the Camorra.
Venturing off Via Tribunali and deeper into the narrow alleys of the Spanish Quarter really is like a trip to another planet.
The sky disappears into a narrow blue strip above rows of washing. At ground level the contents of hole-in-the-wall shops spill out into alleys, interspersed with groups of residents sitting around on chairs and the backs of scooters outside tiny apartments, sometimes with beds right at the door. Tooting scooters weave between the flow of people.
Walls are grimy, even alarmingly decrepit in places.
Then you go around a corner and see a magnificent edifice — an old palazzo or, more usually a church. Despite the devastation of World War II bombing and the ravages of time, the architecture of central Naples is densely packed with the legacy of its many rulers: Romans, Byzantines, Holy Roman Emperors, Angevin French, Hapsburg Spanish, Napoleon and a kingdom of its own which united southern Italy with Sicily until all Italy was united in 1861.
The ruins of Herculaneum.
A cluster of ancient castles looms over the ferry port and looks down from the hilly heights just back from the bay.
Hulking St Elmo castle is easily reached from below on a funicular that serves the smart suburbs behind it. On a clear day, the view of Naples Bay from the battlements is spectacular: the port, Mt Vesuvius, near-distant Sorrento and the blotch of Capri, at this remove a slightly darker blue than the sea and sky around it.
Early on a Sunday morning, I cycled towards Vesuvius on the road that hugs the bay.
Small rowboats dotted the water offshore, and soon enough I came across fishermen selling their catch of fish and crustaceans alongside the road, doing what their forefathers had done probably for centuries.
Fishing boats' fresh catch set out for sale.
Among the washing-bedecked and decrepit old buildings around them I had the sense that nothing much had changed here for more than a century.
Back in my Airbnb, between roaming the city, I found the neighbourhood more charming than first impressions.
From the first-floor balcony, we looked down on a small triangle paved in flagstones, partially monopolised by a busy trattoria. Below, a Chinese trader hawked backpacks, tools and electrical goods; across the way was a Filippina-run mini-market; and on the balcony to my right a Buddha-like man, bald and naked except for underpants, shrieked and remonstrated with the world going by below.
On one occasion, a smartly-dressed man stopped below the balcony with a package of food. My neighbour lowered a plastic bucket on a rope — all the while continuing to shriek in his weirdly high-pitched voice — and hauled the care package up.
The man in the street smiled benignly, responding every now and again, sometimes rocking his cupped hands up and down in empathy, and then walked off with a wave.
Naples and pizza go together like . . .
Tips:
● One of the best things to do in Naples is wander the streets, people-watching. Early evening during the passeggiata is the best time for this.
● The city is part-way through building a huge new metro system. Artists were commissioned to decorate many of them; the best is Toledo station, which has a stunning mosaic mural by South African artist William Kentridge. At one site near the port, two second-century AD boats were recovered and are being restored for display in the future.
● One of the most technically amazing works of religious art in the world is Sanmartino's Cristo Velato in the Sansevero Chapel. The single piece of carved marble presents the shrouded body of Christ so you appear to see through the fabric to the face, torso, arms and legs beneath. You can't visit Naples and miss this.
● If you're doing a DIY visit to Pompeii, go as soon as it opens. By midday the ticket queue can stretch for hundreds of metres.
● When you're done at Pompeii you can take the Circumvesuviana train back to the city and get off at Herculaneum, the less-famous excavated town buried by the 79AD eruption. It's more pocket-sized than Pompeii, equally as fascinating and has almost no tourists.
● Having visited either or both buried cities, the one museum in Naples you must go to is the National Archaeological Museum, which has a huge collection of statues, mosaics and frescos from the sites, including the saucy ones.
As well as tools, cooking equipment and glassware.
● Naples invented pizza, and the pizza here is divine. The food in Naples is very good.
Getting there Emirates flies from Auckland to Rome, via Dubai, with return Economy Class fares from $1839. Connections to Naples are available with partner airlines.
