Naples
Italy · 40.8455° N / 14.3055° E · Sun 23 August 2026
Day 5, Sunday 23 August: Torino Porta Nuova (21:55) to Napoli Centrale (08:22) overnight on InterCityNotte 799 via Genova, 751 km in 10h 27, in a private sleeper compartment on an Interrail pass.
The night train → Naples
I woke a few times in the night, the way you do, and gave up properly at about half five.
Getting to the shared toilets means the narrow corridor again, which at that hour, half asleep, is its own little assault course. Then back to the window.
The sun came up on towns I couldn’t name. I worked out afterwards that we’d have been somewhere on the coast around Civitavecchia, an hour and a half short of Rome — the sea side of the country rather than the middle of it, which I hadn’t realised until it was behind me.
The volcano
And then, after a while, the volcano.
First sight of it. Out of a train window, before breakfast. Impressive isn’t the word, but it’s the one I’ve got.
I’d asked for breakfast an hour before we were due in, which turned out to be exactly right — time to eat it properly and do the last of the packing without rushing.
Getting off
Here’s the odd part. Naples wasn’t the end of the line, so as I stepped off, other people were stepping on. My train was carrying on south without me.
I stood on the platform genuinely slightly thrown by that. Eleven hours in that compartment, and it was already someone else’s.
Napoli Centrale is modern and clean, and at half eight on a Sunday morning it is almost completely empty. Not at all what I’d been led to expect.
I’d phoned the hotel the day before to say I’d be in around eight-thirty, and they’d promised the concierge would hold my bags until the room came free at two. Three hundred metres from the station, as well — which is an enormous blessing when you’re carrying everything you own.
It’s hot. But I’m getting used to hot, and I’ve always got a bottle of water on me.
Laundry day
Not glamorous. But a trip is a trip. The concierge pointed me at a few laundrettes, none of which did drop-off, so I dug the washing out of the rucksack and went and sat with it while the machine went round.
And that hour gave me my first honest read of Naples. It’s a lot less polished than anywhere I’ve been so far — more rubbish in the streets, more graffiti, a rougher edge on everything. Not frightening. Just different, and plainly poorer.
Clean clothes dropped back at the hotel. Coffee, to congratulate myself on a job well done.
Spaccanapoli
Then the scar. A straight line drawn right through the old city, with the buildings leaning in over it so far that most of the day never reaches the ground. After the heat outside, the shade is welcome rather than gloomy.
It opens out every so often, then closes back in. Tourist shops and churches, tourist shops and churches — and Argentinian flags absolutely everywhere, because forty years on, this city still belongs to Maradona.
I walked the whole length of it, up to the top, and found a spot where the city drops away below you and the volcano sits out there behind the lot of it. Photos taken. A great many photos taken.
Then back down, out the other end, and along Via Toledo to the Gallerie d’Italia — where I lost a couple of hours to the paintings and didn’t mind at all.
Lunch at Monzù. A margherita.
Finally, a room
Back to the hotel to check in, at last. Six hours of walking on a night of broken sleep, and I felt every one of them.
An hour flat on the bed. Then out again, because I didn’t come to Naples to lie down.
Castel Nuovo
Down towards Castel Nuovo and Piazza Municipio, then back along Corso Umberto I with the sun getting low and the hunger arriving right on schedule.
Dinner at Attanasio. Second pizza of the day. No regrets whatsoever.
Then back to the hotel, and the deepest sleep I’ve had on this trip.
Conditions — hot, and staying hot. Water bottle permanently in hand.
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06:08 Six in the morning, somewhere south, in a train washroom.
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06:09 Breakfast, and the paperwork for the day.
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06:59 First light on the fields, and the south already looks different.
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06:59
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07:32 Vineyards, flat and hazy, running to the hills.
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07:32
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07:32
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07:37
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07:42
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07:48 Haze on the fields, and the sun not quite through it.
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07:48
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07:50
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07:50
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07:50
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07:50
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08:05 The sun comes up square into the window.
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08:06
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09:36 Naples. It starts loud and does not stop.
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10:12 A square, and four conversations happening at once.
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10:13 Coffee, correctly small.
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10:24 “Welcome to Spaccanapoli”, strung across the street on a banner.
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10:24 Down an alley, with the tiles still on the floor.
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10:35 Spaccanapoli itself — the straight cut the Romans left through the middle.
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10:35
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10:37 The spire in the square, carved to within an inch of its life.
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10:46 Gesù Nuovo, whose whole front is cut into diamonds.
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10:46 A bell tower going up out of the alleys.
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10:50 Flags, scooters, shrines and shop fronts, all in four metres of width.
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11:02
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11:04
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11:12
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11:13
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12:18 Castel Nuovo, five towers and a white marble arch.
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12:51 Pizza, in the city that invented it. It is not a close-run thing.
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16:18 Piazza del Plebiscito, and the hill above it.
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16:19
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16:19 The castle again, from the other side.
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17:05 A column with a Madonna on top, mid-junction.
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17:12 A church front in the last of the light.
Day trip from here: Pompei, out on the Circumvesuviana.