Tunnels, a volcano, a castle on an island and pizza. Naples is better with children than most people expect.
Most European city breaks with children are a negotiation: one museum for you, one playground for them. Naples is different, because a lot of what makes it remarkable is also, straightforwardly, exciting — you go underground, you climb a volcano, you look at a castle standing in the sea.
Napoli Sotterranea — forty metres down, Greek cisterns, Roman tunnels and wartime shelters. Part of the route passes through a passage barely fifty centimetres wide, walked with a candle. Older children love this; it's optional if anyone doesn't.
Vesuvius — you can walk to the rim of the crater. A bus takes you to the car park, then it's about half an hour on loose gravel. Proper shoes.
Castel dell'Ovo — a real castle, on a real island, free, with ramparts to run along.
Città della Scienza — a hands-on science museum with a planetarium, in the Bagnoli area. Check what's open: it suffered a serious fire in 2013 and reopening has been partial.
Choose Herculaneum with young children. Pompeii is enormous, largely shadeless and genuinely tiring; Herculaneum is small, walkable in two hours, and better preserved — you can see wooden doors and furniture. Same eruption, very different day.
The Real Bosco di Capodimonte — 120 hectares of woodland, free, closed to traffic, with lawns you can actually lie on. Rare in Naples and worth the trip up.
Villa Floridiana in the Vomero, and the Villa Comunale on the seafront, which also contains the Anton Dohrn aquarium — a research institute since 1872 whose tanks show only species from the Bay of Naples.
The Fontanelle Cemetery is free and astonishing, and it's thousands of human skulls stacked in a cave. Some children find it fascinating; some find it upsetting. You know yours. It's not a surprise you want to spring on them.
Pushchairs are hard work. The historic centre has narrow pavements, uneven basalt paving and scooters. A carrier is often easier than wheels.
Scooters are the real hazard. Hold hands near roads, and don't assume a red light means anything.
Stairs. Many buildings have no lift, and a Neapolitan second floor can be as high as a fourth. Ask before booking.
Heat. In July and August, plan the middle of the day indoors or underground. It's what locals do.
Pizza. That's it. It's cheap, it's fast, it's everywhere, and it's the best in the world by a considerable margin. Fried pizza, cuoppo of fried snacks, and gelato cover the rest.
One tip: real gelato has dull colours. Bright green pistachio is food dye, not pistachio.
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.
