Naples

Greek sailors founded Parthenope, named after a siren of Greek myth, early in the first millennium BC, on the islet of Megaride and the Pizzofalcone hill above it; in the 6th century BC the city was refounded as Neápolis, the "new city", and became one of the leading cities of Magna Graecia. Its rectangular street grid can still be traced in the old centre. Under Rome it kept its Greek culture, and in the 5th century AD the last western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was exiled here.

After Rome, Naples survived as a duchy, first under Byzantine and then papal protection, until the Normans absorbed it into the Kingdom of Sicily. Frederick II founded its university in 1224, and under the Angevins it became the capital of a kingdom covering most of southern Italy. Aragonese kings and Spanish viceroys followed; by the 17th century it was Europe's second-largest city after Paris, though plague killed about half its 300,000 people in 1656. The Bourbons, from 1734, built palaces, the San Carlo opera house and the Capodimonte porcelain factory.

After unification in 1860 the former capital grew slowly; in 1884, still Italy's largest city, it suffered a cholera epidemic that led to the risanamento, a rebuilding of the centre. In September 1943 Neapolitans rose against the German occupiers in the Four Days of Naples. The population peaked at about 1.23 million in 1971 and has fallen since, while the waste crisis, the Camorra and unemployment shaped the city's image. In recent years tourism has boomed, with about 20 million visitors in 2025.

Naples has given Italy and the world a whole culture of its own. The historic centre was listed by UNESCO in 1995, and the art of the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo is on UNESCO's intangible heritage list. Neapolitan song, from "'O sole mio" onwards, the comic masked figure of Pulcinella, the sceneggiata — a popular musical melodrama of thwarted love and honest men driven to crime — and the San Carlo opera house, the oldest continuously active in the world, all belong to the city. The San Pietro a Majella conservatory, founded in 1826, continues a musical tradition that goes back to conservatories of the 16th century.

Faith is intense and public. Three times a year the cathedral fills to watch whether the dried blood of San Gennaro, the patron saint, liquefies; street shrines and votive lamps stand on corners, and the Fontanelle cemetery keeps alive an old cult of the anonymous dead. Via San Gregorio Armeno's workshops carve figures for the presepe, the Christmas crib, and Capodimonte porcelain descends from the Bourbon royal factory founded in 1743.

Football is close to a religion. SSC Napoli play at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona in Fuorigrotta, renamed after the Argentine who led the club to its first titles, and the club has since won four league championships. Neapolitan, regarded as a distinct language and protected by a regional law of 2008, is spoken across the city alongside Italian.

About 905,000 people live within the city limits, and nearly three million in the metropolitan city, which spreads around the foot of Vesuvius; the wider urban area holds about 4.4 million. Naples is Italy's most densely populated major city, although its population has fallen by about a quarter since 1971 as people moved to the suburbs. Immigrants make up a smaller share than in northern cities, under 7 per cent of residents.

Within its own limits Naples has Italy's fourth-largest city economy, after Milan, Rome and Turin. The port, the universities — Federico II, founded in 1224, and L'Orientale, specialising in Eastern studies — public services and NATO's Allied Joint Force Command all employ many people, and tourism carries ever more weight. Unemployment, especially among the young, stays high, and the growth of short-term lets in the historic centre has raised fears of gentrification of the kind seen in Venice and Florence.

Daily life is loud and lived in public: espresso at the bar, washing strung across narrow streets, scooters in every alley, evenings on the seafront between Castel dell'Ovo and Mergellina. Weekday commutes by public transport average well over an hour. West of the city, renewed ground uplift and small earthquakes at the Campi Flegrei around Pozzuoli are closely monitored, and plans have been prepared to evacuate up to 360,000 people from the area if needed.

Naples is traditionally credited as the home of pizza. The Neapolitan pizza is soft, thin in the middle with a puffed rim, and comes as the marinara, with tomato, garlic and oregano, or the margherita, with tomato, mozzarella and basil, named after Queen Margherita of Savoy following her visit. Street food includes pizza fritta, deep-fried pizza, and the cuoppo, a paper cone of mixed fried food. In May 2024 Time Out named Naples the best city in the world for food.

Spaghetti is the city's other emblem, eaten with clams (alle vongole) or other shellfish. Parmigiana di melanzane, layered aubergine, and casatiello, an Easter bread, are home classics, and as a port Naples cooks seafood dishes such as impepata di cozze, peppered mussels; alici marinate, marinated anchovies; and baccalà, salt cod, stewed or fried.

The pastry shops are a genre of their own: shell-shaped sfogliatelle, rum-soaked babà, zeppole, pastiera for Easter and struffoli, little balls of dough in honey, at Christmas. Coffee is dense and sweet, and the old Neapolitan flip coffee pot, the cuccumella, inspired both the espresso machine and the moka pot. Limoncello, the lemon liqueur, is claimed as a Naples speciality. The street markets of the Pignasecca and Porta Nolana show the everyday side of the city's food.