Day-by-day programme of this 8-day itinerary across Naples, Pompeii, Capri and the Amalfi Coast.
Day 1 โ Arrival in Naples
Land and dive straight in: the dead-straight split of the old centre, the nativity workshops of San Gregorio Armeno and pizza in the place where it was born.
- โ๏ธ Naples โ Aeroporto di Napoli Capodichino (NAP)
- ๐ Spaccanapoli โ Seen from above it is a perfectly straight cleft splitting the old centre in two: walking it means entering Naples' time machine โ the Greco-Roman decumanus turned into a parade of Baroque churches, fry shops, bookshops and scooters brushing your elbows. Mandatory detours: Via San Gregorio Armeno, where the nativity-scene masters carve shepherds all year round, and Piazza San Domenico for a sfogliatella at Scaturchio. For dinner a certainty awaits: the street of the pizzaioli is three minutes away.
- ๐ฝ๏ธ Gino e Toto Sorbillo โ Via dei Tribunali is pizza's sacred street and Sorbillo its most famous name: soft, puffy dough, San Marzano tomatoes, fior di latte from the Lattari mountains, a wood oven that never stops. The queue outside is part of the ritual โ leave your name and wait among the scooters with a beer. If you won't wait, fall back on the historic Di Matteo, fifty metres on, with its deep-fried pizza. Then a short walk to digest and off to bed: tomorrow Naples means business.
- ๐จ Hotel Piazza Bellini & Apartments โ Centro storico, Napoli
Day 2 โ Monumental Naples
Pompeii's treasures at the Archaeological Museum, the impossible marble of the Veiled Christ, the city's biggest square and sunset on the seafront by Castel dell'Ovo.
- ๐ National Archaeological Museum of Naples โ Everything no longer at Pompeii is here: the mosaics of the House of the Faun with the Battle of Alexander, frescoes lifted from the buried villas, the Farnese Bull and Hercules, the Secret Cabinet with the erotic art that scandalised the Bourbons. Seeing it BEFORE the excavations transforms the visit: tomorrow, walking among the empty houses, you will know exactly what used to fill them. A good two hours, then head seaward down Via Toledo, stopping halfway for a genius of marble.
- ๐ Sansevero Chapel โ A chapel small as a drawing room holding the most astonishing piece of marble in Italy: Giuseppe Sanmartino's Veiled Christ, its shroud seemingly damp and truly resting on the body โ for centuries it was whispered that the alchemist Prince of Sansevero had 'marbled' a real veil. Around it, Modesty, Disillusion with its carved net, and the unsettling anatomical machines in the crypt. Timed online tickets only: book days ahead. Outside, a quick lunch, and Via Toledo carries you straight to the square of kings.
- ๐ Piazza del Plebiscito โ The hemicycle of San Francesco di Paola embraces Naples' largest square, with the Royal Palace facing it and the Gambrinus cafรฉ on the corner โ the ritual here is the caffรจ sospeso: pay for two coffees, one stays for whoever comes next. Next door, the Galleria Umberto I with its iron-and-glass dome rivals Milan's. From the square it is a five-minute walk down to the sea: the Via Caracciolo seafront is just waiting for sunset.
- ๐ Castel dell'Ovo โ Naples' oldest castle floats on the islet of Megaride, where the Greeks first landed and where โ legend says โ Virgil hid the magic egg that holds up the city: if it breaks, Naples falls. From the marina pier the sunset view is the most Neapolitan there is: a violet Vesuvius in the background, pines, boats. Fish dinner at the marina tables or takeaway pizza on the sea wall. Early start tomorrow: the Circumvesuviana runs towards the buried city.
Day 3 โ Pompeii and Sorrento
Bags in hand and onto the Circumvesuviana: a whole morning among the ruins of Pompeii, then on along the same line to Sorrento, your base for the next four days.
- โ๏ธ Napoli Porta Nolana โ Pompei Scavi - Villa dei Misteri โ Stazione Circumvesuviana, Pompei
- ๐ Pompeii Archaeological Park โ No archaeological site in the world tells of Roman life like this: you walk on cart-rutted paving stones past bakeries with their ovens still standing, thermopolia with frescoed counters, the Villa of the Mysteries with its impossible red, the casts of victims caught by the eruption. Four hours fly by: enter at Porta Marina at opening, head straight for the Villa of the Mysteries and the Forum, download the map โ the city really is a city. Mid-afternoon, back to the station: the same line, half an hour of tunnels and lemon groves, and you surface in Sorrento.
- ๐ Piazza Tasso โ Sorrento's drawing room hangs over the Vallone dei Mulini: cafรฉs and horse carriages on one side, the green ravine with its abandoned mill on the other. From here slip into Via San Cesareo, squeezed between shops of lemons, inlaid wood and free-pour limoncello tastings, down to the Villa Comunale belvedere for sunset over the gulf with Vesuvius ahead. Dinner of gnocchi alla sorrentina and early to bed: tomorrow morning the ferry casts off for the island of islands.
- ๐จ Hotel Del Corso โ Centro, Sorrento
Day 4 โ Capri
Morning ferry and a boat tour of the island with the Blue Grotto, then the funicular to the Piazzetta and the Gardens of Augustus sheer above the Faraglioni. Evening ferry back.
- โ๏ธ Port of Sorrento โ Capri โ Porto di Marina Grande, Capri
- ๐ฏ Capri island boat tour โ Two hours by boat around the island: the Faraglioni from below, passing through the middle arch if the sea allows, the White Grotto, sixties villas clinging to the rock and finally the line of rowing boats outside the Blue Grotto โ you lie back flat to slip through the low opening, and inside the water ignites an electric blue no photo can render (entrance fee separate, paid to the boatman). Back at Marina Grande, the funicular climbs in five minutes to the island's glamorous heart.
- ๐ Piazzetta di Capri โ Four cafรฉs with tables wedged into a square the size of a courtyard, the bell tower with its majolica clock, and the eternal ritual of watching who walks by: the Piazzetta is Capri's theatre. Lunch on a caprese where the caprese was born, then Via Camerelle for the boutiques and made-to-measure sandals. From there, a ten-minute stroll among the bougainvillea brings you to the most famous balcony on the Tyrrhenian: the Gardens of Augustus.
- ๐ Gardens of Augustus โ Flowering terraces sheer above the sea with the view that made the island's fortune: the Faraglioni on one side, the bay of Marina Piccola on the other, and below the impossible hairpins of Via Krupp snaking down to the water. The ticket costs as much as a coffee and you stay as long as you like. If your legs have energy left, go up to Anacapri for the Monte Solaro chairlift; otherwise drift lazily down to the port. The evening ferry returns to Sorrento with the sun low over the gulf: tomorrow, Positano.
Day 5 โ Positano
The ferry hugs the coast to Italy's most photographed village: stairways, boutiques, the beach below the majolica dome of the Assunta church and a sunset aperitivo.
- โ๏ธ Port of Sorrento โ Positano โ Pontile di Positano, Spiaggia Grande
- ๐ Church of Santa Maria Assunta, Positano โ The green and yellow majolica dome is Positano's lighthouse, and the whole town climbs around it: you wander upwards without a goal through stairways, bougainvillea arches, beachwear ateliers (la 'moda Positano' was born here in the sixties) and ceramics shops, turning at every bend because the view keeps changing and improving. Inside the church, the Byzantine black Madonna who according to legend cried 'posa, posa' โ set me down โ to Saracen sailors, naming the town. Then head down: the beach lies at the foot of every staircase.
- ๐ Spiaggia Grande, Positano โ Three hundred metres of dark pebbles and orange umbrellas with the vertical town at your back: lunch at the restaurants on the sand with spaghetti alle vongole, swim while watching the houses climb into the sky, and if you need to stretch your legs take the cliffside path to Fornillo beach, quieter, ten minutes of walkway among the agaves. The water is instantly deep and impossibly blue. Around six, the final ritual: a table high above the beach for sunset.
- ๐ฝ๏ธ Franco's Bar โ The open-air bar of Le Sirenuse is where Positano comes to look at itself: theatrical cocktails, giant lemons on the tables and the Assunta dome lighting up below you as the sky shifts from gold to pink. No reservations: arrive early and queue, worth it even for a single glass. Alternatively, the budget aperitivo is a beer on the pier. Then the last ferry or the bus takes you back to Sorrento: tomorrow the Coast gives an encore with Amalfi and Ravello.
Day 6 โ Amalfi and Ravello
The State Road 163 bus to Amalfi and its Arab-Norman cathedral, then up to Ravello for Villa Rufolo and Villa Cimbrone's Terrace of Infinity. Back to Sorrento in the evening.
- โ๏ธ Sorrento โ Amalfi โ Piazza Flavio Gioia, Amalfi
- ๐ Amalfi Cathedral โ Sixty-two steps climb from the square to the gold-and-mosaic faรงade of St Andrew's cathedral, with bronze doors cast in Constantinople back when Amalfi was a maritime republic laying down the law across the Mediterranean. Inside, the Cloister of Paradise with its slender Arab columns is a corner of the Orient. Outside, the town smells of lemons: try a delizia al limone and poke around the lanes where paper was once made by hand. Then to the bus stop: you climb to Ravello, three hundred metres above the sea.
- ๐ Villa Rufolo โ The Moorish tower on Ravello's square hides the gardens that thunderstruck Wagner โ 'Klingsor's magic garden exists!' โ and that today host the Ravello Festival's summer concerts, the orchestra on a stage cantilevered over the void. From the flowering terraces the coast unrolls all the way to Capo d'Orso, umbrella pines in the foreground: one of the most painted and photographed views in Italy. And ten minutes of lanes further on, there is one that even manages to top it.
- ๐ Villa Cimbrone โ At the end of Villa Cimbrone's avenue, past the little temple of Ceres, the Terrace of Infinity juts into the void with its row of sun-bleached marble busts: below, a three-hundred-metre drop; ahead, only sea and sky blurring into each other. Gore Vidal, who lived in Ravello for thirty years, called it the most beautiful view in the world. Back to Amalfi and on to Sorrento by bus, dazed with blue. Tomorrow Campania plays its last card: the volcano that wrote this whole story.
Day 7 โ Vesuvius and Herculaneum
Leaving Sorrento: up to the crater of Vesuvius with the whole gulf at your feet, then the Herculaneum excavations with their intact woodwork and colours. Last night in Naples with dinner in the Spanish Quarters.
- ๐ Vesuvius Crater โ From Sorrento, take the Circumvesuviana to Ercolano Scavi then the Vesuvio Express shuttle up to a thousand metres: from there half an hour on foot over lava gravel and you stand on the crater rim, a two-hundred-metre chasm still smoking from its fumaroles. The view is double: inward, the volcano's throat; outward, the whole gulf from Capri to Capo Miseno with Naples stretched at the feet of its sleeping giant. Park tickets online only, timed entry. Ride the shuttle back down: the next stop lies buried under twenty metres of petrified mud.
- ๐ Herculaneum Archaeological Park โ Smaller than Pompeii but better preserved: the boiling mud that buried Herculaneum also sealed what burned elsewhere โ carbonised wooden beams, doors, furniture, the vivid colours of the frescoes and the weave of the mosaics in the House of Neptune. Two hours of walking twelve metres below the level of the modern town literally growing on top of it; at the old port warehouses, the skeletons of those who fled tell of the last night. Then the Circumvesuviana to Naples for the final evening: tonight you dine properly, in the Quarters.
- ๐ฝ๏ธ Trattoria da Nennella โ In the Spanish Quarters, among washing lines and Maradona murals, Nennella has been pure theatre for seventy years: singing waiters, fruit served in a (brand-new plastic) bidet, a fixed menu that changes daily โ pasta e patate with provola, genovese, friarielli and sausage. You wait outside in a cheerful crush until your name is shouted. It is the right closing scene for the trip: Naples laughing. Tomorrow morning, a sfogliatella and the airport.
- ๐จ Hotel Il Convento โ Centro storico, Napoli
Day 8 โ Sfogliatella and the journey home
Breakfast with the city's most famous warm sfogliatella, steps from the station, then the Alibus to Capodichino. You leave with suitcases smelling of lemons.
- ๐ฝ๏ธ Sfogliatella Attanasio โ Since 1930, in an alley behind the station, Attanasio's oven has turned out sfogliatelle non-stop: the riccia, crisp with a thousand layers, and the frolla, soft, both filled with ricotta, semolina and candied orange, served so hot you must wait before the first bite. The queue moves fast and smells of baking. One at the counter and a stash for the journey, then the Alibus outside the station gets you to Capodichino in twenty minutes.
- โ๏ธ Naples โ Aeroporto di Milano Linate (LIN)
