Naples & the Amalfi Coast: the Honest Guide
Backstreet pizza, cliff towns, and a city that does not pose.
This region is two tempers in one. There is Naples, loud and lived-in, where the pizza is religion and the old centre runs on its own logic. Then the coast bends south, the road climbs above the sea, and the towns stack themselves down the cliffs in pale terraces of lemon and stone. It rewards people who let the place set the pace, who follow a good lunch and do not mind a wrong turn. We feature one place in full, free to read: the Cimitero delle Fontanelle, the vast tufa ossuary in the Sanità district, where Neapolitans once adopted the anonymous dead and the city keeps a quiet account of its own. The rest of the ten stay sealed: a backstreet pizza counter locals queue for, a vineyard on the slopes of Vesuvius, a coast path walked since the Greeks, a fishing village the road forgot, an island worth the ferry. Every entry is checked against real sources and shown with a real licensed photograph. Verified, not invented. The full guide opens all ten.
CC BY-SA 3.0Cimitero delle Fontanelle
A former tufa quarry in the Rione Sanita, now an ossuary holding the remains of tens of thousands of anonymous dead, many from the plague of 1656 and the cholera of the 1800s. For generations locals came here to adopt a skull, clean it, pray to it and ask favours, a folk cult of the abandoned souls that the Church eventually tried to suppress. The cave is cool, dim and genuinely strange, stacked skulls catching the light from the entrance. It is free and a world away from the harbour tourist circuit. Go in daylight and pair it with a wander through the rest of the Sanita.
10 places in Naples & the Amalfi Coast
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EATAntica Pizzeria Da MicheleNaples (Forcella)
This is the pizzeria that has kept its argument short since 1870, when Salvatore Condurro opened it.
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DRINKCantine degli AstroniNaples (Agnano, Campi Flegrei)
Most visitors to Naples never reach the Campi Flegrei, the volcanic crater country just west of the city, which is exactly why this is worth the…
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BUYPasticceria PansaAmalfi
Pansa has stood on Amalfi's cathedral square since 1830, which in a town this churned by day-trippers counts for a lot.
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STAYLe SirenusePositano
The Sersale family turned their Positano villa into a small hotel in 1951, and it still reads as a family house rather than a hotel, just…
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DRINKGran Caffè GambrinusNaples (Piazza del Plebiscito)
A Belle Epoque caffe near Piazza del Plebiscito, all gilt, mirrors and frescoed ceilings, open since 1860 and once the haunt of D'Annunzio and Oscar Wilde.
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DRIFTSentiero degli Dei (Path of the Gods)Agerola to Nocelle (Positano)
The best way to see the Amalfi Coast is from above it, on foot, with the traffic and the buses far below.
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EATTrattoria da CicciottoNaples (Marechiaro, Posillipo)
Down at Marechiaro, the little fishing inlet at the foot of Posillipo, this seafood trattoria sits right over the water with the gulf and Capri on…
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BUYTenuta VannuloCapaccio Paestum
An organic buffalo dairy near the Greek temples of Paestum, where the mozzarella is shaped by hand every morning and sold within hours in the farm…
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DRIFTMarina di PraiaPraiano
A sliver of pebble beach jammed into a steep ravine at Praiano, with fishing boats hauled up on the shingle and high rock walls closing it…
These open in the guide, with how to reach each one, when to go, and the source behind every claim.
All 80 places across Italy, Naples & the Amalfi Coast included.
Every place fact-checked against real sources, every photo real and licensed. Instant PDF.