The most beautiful thing in Naples is the bay, and nobody charges for it. That is not a slogan — the free list here is unusually long.
Some cities put a turnstile in front of everything worth seeing. Naples largely doesn't, partly by design and partly because there's simply too much of it.
Castel dell'Ovo — free. The oldest castle in the city, on the islet where Greek settlers landed, with terraces over the whole bay. Go at sunset.
Parco Virgiliano, on the Posillipo hill — free. Terraces facing Nisida, Procida, Ischia and Capri. The best sunset in Naples.
Villa Floridiana, in the Vomero — a free public park descending towards Chiaia, with a belvedere at the bottom.
The seafront, from Mergellina to Castel dell'Ovo: three pedestrian kilometres with Vesuvius in front of you.
Many of the great churches have free entry: San Paolo Maggiore, with the Roman columns; the Gesù Nuovo, with its extraordinary pyramid-studded façade; San Domenico Maggiore, where Thomas Aquinas taught and Giordano Bruno was tried; the Duomo itself.
Opening hours are the catch: most close between about 12.30 and 4.30pm, and some don't reopen. Mornings are safer.
The Fontanelle Cemetery — free. A tufa quarry holding the bones of tens of thousands of people, where for centuries Neapolitans would adopt an anonymous skull, clean it, name it and ask it for protection. The cult was formally banned in 1969. It is not macabre so much as anthropologically extraordinary.
The Pausilypon Archaeological Park — free, but guided and by reservation only, on limited days. You reach a Roman imperial villa with a theatre through an 800-metre Roman tunnel. Book ahead; you can't just turn up.
The Botanical Garden — free, normally by reservation. Twelve hectares two hundred metres from one of the noisiest roads in the city.
Palazzo dello Spagnolo and Palazzo Sanfelice in the Sanità: the famous open double staircases, free to walk into. They are lived-in buildings, so behave as you would in someone's home.
The Pedamentina, four hundred steps from the Certosa di San Martino down to the centre. Free, twenty minutes, and one of the best walks in Italy.
Galleria Umberto I — a monumental iron-and-glass arcade you simply walk through, open at all hours.
Toledo metro station — you need a ticket to pass the barriers, but the escalator shaft with its blue mosaic is regularly listed among the most beautiful metro stations in Europe. The cheapest art in the city.
State museums in Italy — including the Archaeological Museum and Capodimonte — have free-entry days, typically the first Sunday of the month. Check current rules before relying on it, and expect crowds.
This guide is written and maintained in Naples. The Italian version of the site has far more: hundreds of places, neighbourhood guides and long-form stories about the city. Read it in Italian.
