Mid-range · 6-hour walk · Naples
From the museum to the bay in six hours
Pompeii's mosaics, the glass arcade, the opera house, the royal squares and the castle on the water.
The finds from Pompeii and Herculaneum did not stay at the sites: the best of them are in the archaeological museum at the top of Via Toledo, and that is where this route starts. From there it runs downhill through the city the Spanish viceroys and Bourbon kings built, past the arcade, the opera house and the royal palace, and ends on the seafront looking across the bay at Vesuvius.
The route, stop by stop
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Museo Archeologico Nazionale
The Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii's House of the Faun, the Farnese Bull, and the Secret Cabinet of erotic art that was kept locked for most of two centuries. Allow the full time.
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Galleria Umberto I
A cross-shaped shopping arcade under a glass and iron dome, finished in 1890 as part of the rebuilding of the slums after the cholera epidemic of 1884.
15 min here Walk here → -
Teatro di San Carlo
Opened in 1737, the oldest opera house in Europe still in use. Guided tours of the red and gold auditorium run most days.
30 min here Walk here → -
Piazza del Plebiscito
The great square in front of the royal palace, closed by the colonnade of San Francesco di Paola, a church modelled on the Pantheon in Rome.
20 min here Walk here → -
Palazzo Reale
The palace of the Spanish viceroys and then the Bourbon kings. The niches on the façade hold statues of eight rulers of Naples, added in the 1880s; inside are the grand staircase and the royal apartments.
45 min here Walk here → -
Castel dell'Ovo
The oldest castle in Naples, on a small island joined to the shore. Legend says Virgil hid a magic egg in its foundations, and that the city will fall if it ever breaks.
35 min here Walk here → -
Via Caracciolo
The seafront promenade towards Mergellina, with Vesuvius across the bay. Walk it at the end of the day, when half of Naples does the same.
30 min here Walk here →
More walks in Naples
More in Naples
Every walking route in Naples, the full Naples guide for where to stay and what a day costs, or walks in other cities.