Naples

The story of Naples

Naples is Greek to its bones: Neapolis, the "new city," founded around 470 BC beside an older colony tied to the siren Parthenope, whose name the city still uses poetically. Beneath the streets, forty metres down, the Greek and Roman city persists as a walkable underworld of cisterns and theatres.

Capital of its own kingdom for six centuries under Norman, Angevin, Aragonese, and Bourbon crowns, Naples was one of Europe's largest cities when it built the San Carlo (1737), the continent's oldest working opera house. Vesuvius looms over everything, the volcano that buried Pompeii still counts as active, and Neapolitans live with it like a difficult relative.

Curiosities: pizza as the world knows it was codified here, the Margherita allegedly patriotically tricolour for a queen in 1889, and Neapolitan pizza-making is UNESCO-listed; the cathedral's vial of San Gennaro's blood 'liquefies' thrice yearly before anxious crowds; and the city's coffee ritual includes the caffè sospeso, a second espresso paid forward for a stranger.