Nearly 3,000 years of history in the city Italy called its own shame.

Naples is, without a doubt, one of my favourite cities.

Endlessly intoxicating, deeply divisive (and, of course, home of the margherita pizza). Grimy alleys and crowded streets give way to unfathomable splendour, in a way that feels almost entirely unique.

It’s a city which goes back to the Ancient Greeks. Everything that came after – the Romans, the Spanish, Napoleon, the Italians, Maradona – was crammed into roughly the same space.

The result is a city with a ridiculously fascinating history. One that spent over half a millennium as a capital, before becoming simultaneously the ‘shame of Italy’, and arguably its most internationally romanticised (and vilified) city.

There’s been a bit of an Italian lilt to my blog in recent weeks, following my exploration of London’s Little Italy. So I thought I’d give a go at another of my ‘history in 10 buildings’ pieces – my second, after my piece on Norwich.

We’ve got nearly 3,000 years of buildings and stories to get through. So let’s get cracking.

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The Ancient Greeks land in Italy

Many cities now claim to be, literally, layer after layer of history. In Naples it’s truer than most.

The city’s history stretches back extraordinarily far, even by Italian standards. Eight hundred years before the birth of Christ, it became one of the first Ancient Greek settlements in Italy as they dominated the Mediterranean.

It was originally named Parthenope, after the legend of the sirens. If you’ve recently watched Christopher Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’, there’s a link here. Parthenope was one of the sirens who Odysseus heard singing.

But Odysseus had tied himself up – so that he could listen to the sirens’ song but, as he was tied up, much as he wanted to, he couldn’t swim towards them.

Parthenope was said to be so heartbroken at her failure to lure Odysseus that she threw herself into the sea. Her body washed up on the shore, where the settlement was founded.

Several centuries later, the city was refounded as Neapolis – literally ‘New City’. Unsurprisingly, very little of this city exists now. But Naples does like to show its past on its sleeve.

In a square called Piazza Bellini, now one of the hearts of Naples’ student nightlife, ancient walls of Greek Neapolis were discovered in the 1950s.

Walls once described as impregnable, now nonchalantly sat in the middle of a square, surrounded by cigarette smoking, spritz drinking students.

We also still see the influence of the Greeks in Naples’ street plan. They laid out an organised grid. ‘Organised’ is about as far from modern Naples as you can imagine – but it’s there, if you look. Most of the city still follows that ancient grid.

It’s most visible on one street. Spaccanapoli, now the city’s main route for tourists, cuts through the city in such a straight line you can see it from above.

This was one of the main thoroughfares of Greek Naples. The gaps – the chaos, overcrowding and poverty – were filled in later.

Roman Naples, the eruption of Vesuvius and a theatre in a basement

As the power of Ancient Greece began to wane, Naples – like just about everywhere else in Italy – fell under Roman rule. Along with Herculaneum and Pompeii, Roman Naples was a tourist destination – a holiday resort, visited for its nice conditions and gorgeous bay.

But for centuries the city held on to many of its ancient Greek customs, including its language and institutions. This brought more tourists. Prestigious Romans would visit to increase their knowledge of Greek culture.

And then in 79 AD, it suffered something of a setback – one which would make the Bay of Naples, outside Rome itself, just about the most famous ancient Roman site in the world.

The eruption of Vesuvius destroyed much of the region, and killed thousands. Naples, purely due to a quirk of wind and geography, was saved the worst of the damage.

There’s little Roman to see nowadays. Because similar to London, people just kept living there, and just kept building.

We can see bits, though, incorporated into the city.

Nowhere is this more true than Naples’ Roman theatre, which, over the centuries, was simply incorporated into people’s homes. Dwellings built over the seating, as they gradually forgot what it originally was.

The street pattern didn’t forget, though. Seen from above, one road still follows the curve of the ancient theatre.

One household even discovered a cavern below it, which they assumed was one of Naples’ many cisterns. For years, they used it as a wine cellar.

But this wasn’t a cistern. In the late 1990s, Archaeologists had started digs in the neighbourhood. On a visit to the flat with the cellar, they spotted fragments of Roman brickwork in the walls – so the flat was compulsorily purchased.

Inside they found a trapdoor leading down to the wine cellar (which is still used as the entrance to the site). Go down that ladder, and your standing in the ancient backstage area of a Roman theatre.

The long medieval middle and the Egg Castle

I’m going to speed through a fair few centuries, now.

After the fall of Rome, Naples spent many centuries passing through different hands – some of this period it was independent, some of it Byzantine, and some of it as part of the Kingdom of Sicily.

From this period, we get what is surely Naples’ most fantastically named building: Castel dell’Ovo, ‘Egg Castle’.

It was built on the site of a Roman Villa by Roger the Norman, during a brief period of Norman rule over the city. And interestingly, if the siren Parthenope really did wash up on Naples’ ancient shore, it would have been on this site – the headland sticking out of the bay.

The ‘Egg Castle’ name comes from the Middle Ages, when the Roman poet Virgil was beginning to be seen as a great sorcerer.

According to the legend, Virgil put a magical egg into the fortifications of a building on the site, which stayed there – along with his bones – long after his death.

The egg was protective: it was said that if it was ever to break, the building would be destroyed, and Naples would face disaster.

Given that about a century after Virgil’s death, Vesuvius erupted, but Naples survived largely unscathed, perhaps the egg really did do its job.

A few other buildings come from this long, medieval interlude – not least Naples’ Cathedral, which was begun in the 13th century, then added to again and again.

Around this time, Naples first became a capital under Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX of France, who made it capital of the Kingdom of Sicily.

A few years later, Charles lost the island of Sicily. For a while it tried to keep the name: stumbling on as a Sicily-less Kingdom of Sicily.

But this was a turning point in Naples’ history. It would remain a capital city, in one form or another, and under various jurisdictions, for around 600 years.

One of Europe’s most important cities…

Naples really began to flourish in the 15th century, when it was conquered by Alfonso of Aragon in 1442, before being absorbed into the Spanish crown in 1503.

It would spend the next two centuries as the capital of the Kingdom of Naples, a Spanish possession covering the whole of mainland southern Italy.

The city became the largest in the Spanish Empire: a port and a cultural centre for an empire that was ballooning across the world.

Some of Naples’ most emblematic buildings come from this period, not least the grand Royal Palace, begun in 1600 .

My favourite, though, is Gesù Nuovo: Naples’ most beautiful church which, from the outside, doesn’t look like a church at all.

It was originally built as a 15th century palace, with an austere, fortress like facade. In the late 16th, though, it was bought by a Catholic order who needed a new flagship church in the growing city.

Rather than demolish the unusual facade, they decided to keep it – spikes and all – and built a church behind those existing walls. The result is a feast of baroque, one you’d never expect behind such an imposing exterior.

The exterior of Gesu Nuovo:

And the interior:

…and one of its largest

Naples’ Spanish era wasn’t just a period of culture, wealth and fantastic architecture.

In 1500, around 100,000 people lived here. By 1600 it was closer to 300,000: some sources have it as the largest city in Europe, others as its second. But either way, the population had tripled in a century. Naples was now bigger than London, bigger than Rome, bigger than Madrid.

But it didn’t have the space to put all those people. Geography hemmed Naples in between the sea and a ring of volcanic hills. The Spanish crown didn’t help matters when, in 1566, they banned building beyond the city walls.

So the ancient Greek street plan stayed exactly where it was, and the city grew upwards instead. Extra storeys went onto existing houses, courtyards were built over, and ground floors became single rooms opening straight onto the street. The alleys got taller and darker.

This overcrowding was a climate rife for disease. An outbreak of plague in 1656 killed around half the population, within just a few months.

Those same tight, claustrophobic streets are the ones that give Naples its look and feel, the ones that are photographed thousands of times a day, and which Vespas now speed down, winding in and out of terrified tourists.

Naples’ splendour grows, despite huge upheaval

From the 18th century, Naples entered a period of upheaval. The last Spanish Habsburg died without an heir, and the War of the Spanish Succession kicked off.

As a result, Spain lost control of Naples. Over the next century, it would change ruler no less than five times. It went from Spanish to Austrian to Bourbon to French (under Napoleon), and back to the Bourbons again.

Despite this, the city – in an architectural sense, at least – continued to flourish, in many ways more so than before.

The biggest builders were the Bourbon family, a French dynasty who by then held the Spanish throne (and, incidentally, still do) who ruled for much of this period.

Unlike the Habsburgs, the Bourbons actually lived in Naples, so it’s perhaps no coincidence that money started pouring in to building projects.

Arguably the most notable was the Teatro di San Carlo, one of the city’s greatest architectural achievements, and the oldest active opera venue in the world. So influential was the theatre, it essentially acted as a template for later theatres built all over Europe.

Later, after Napoleon invaded the city, Naples’ main square was laid out – Piazza del Plebiscito. Originally laid out by Napoleon’s brother in law, they didn’t hold on to Naples long enough to finish it. The Bourbons once again took the city, and built a huge church along the square, modelled on the Pantheon in Rome.

And despite the ever-changing rulers, the 18th century also saw Naples establish itself as a tourist destination, as Herculaneum and Pompeii began to be excavated – securing the region a place on the ‘Grand Tour’ that many European aristocrats had begun viewing as a rite of passage.

Galleria Borbonica – a city on a knife edge

This period of upheaval ended with the Bourbon family once again in control throughout the 19th century. But they never felt particularly secure.

By the mid 1850s, King Ferdinand II was the ruler. But he’d seen his family kicked out not just once, but twice in the last hundred years. And in 1848, he suppressed a revolution in violent fashion, giving him the nickname ‘King Bomba’. This left Naples as essentially a police state.

He knew that his own capital city could turn against him at any moment. So he set about building an escape route.

The result is Galleria Borbonica, one of Naples’ weirdest sites. The idea was to link the Royal Palace with a spot slightly out of town, next to a barracks, so that if needed the King could quickly escape.

But it was never finished – and in 1859, the King died.

Later, the tunnels were used as a World War Two shelter, and then as a municipal junkyard. Nowadays if you visit, rusting old Vespas line the dark tunnel.

Anyway, two years after the King died, Italy was unified. Naples was now part of a large country, ruled by Rome.

For the first time in over half a millennium, it wasn’t a capital.

Cholera and arcades

In Italy’s first few decades as a nation, Naples’ story was one of migration. Thousands left the city and found new lives elsewhere across the world, not least in America.

It’s partly for this reason that the city is so emblematic. With those migrants, margherita pizza spread across the world.

So did Neapolitan culture, and a type of music. Known as canzone napoletana, it dates from the 19th century. Many of its songs are about a longing for Naples that no longer existed, written in the climate of the fast-modernising world of the 1800s, and the beginnings of mass-migration to the USA.

The most famous song from the genre is O’ Sole Mio, which has also been remade by Elivs Presley as It’s Now Or Never. And not to mention it’s a song which literally went to space – it’s said to have been sung by Yuri Gagarin while he orbited the Earth, the first man in space.

People were migrating partly because of the conditions they were living in. This was a city of extreme poverty, filth and cholera – and no longer with its capital status.

One especially deadly outbreak in the 1880s killed around 7,000. Something had to change, and so the government led a programme named the ‘Risanamento’ – literally meaning ‘making healthy again’.

This amounted to major redevelopment, slum clearances, narrow alleys being replaced with wider boulevards.

From this, we get two of Naples’ finest architectural achievements. The first is Galleria Umberto I – named after the King who even visited the city during a cholera epidemic.

It was modelled on Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, and is a stunning shopping arcade, complete with a huge 56m dome, lavish Renaissance decorations, a rich marble floor, and one of the classiest McDonalds I’ve ever seen.

Elsewhere, most buildings we see today in the area of Chiaia come from this era. Outside the historic walls, this was always a space for Naples’ aristocracy to live, unimpeded by the planning restrictions of Naples proper. In the 19th century it boomed, palazzos taking over the seaside quarter.

A personal favourite landmark in Chiaia comes from a bit later – Palazzo Mannajuolo, built in 1911, and home to surely one of Europe’s finest 20th century staircases:

Forcing the Nazis out

During the Second World War, Naples found itself at the centre of Allied bombing raids. Thanks to its strategic location and strong military presence, it would become one of the most bombed sites in Italy. More than 20,000 people died.

One of the most interesting sites related to this period is actually in a building I’ve already looked at: Gesu Nuovo.

Within the beautiful baroque church is a relatively simple side chapel, dedicated to a 20th century doctor known as San Giuseppe Moscati.

Moscati spent his life treating the poor for free, including during those frequent outbreaks of disease. As a result he became one of Naples’ favourite saints, with a chapel made in his honour after his death.

Fast forward to World War Two. When Naples was being bombed, people huddled in the church for shelter, believing it would protect them. In 1943, a particularly severe raid hammered the city. The church wasn’t spared, parts of it were destroyed.

Many people were sheltering in Moscati’s chapel. One bomb hit the roof directly above the chapel and… nothing happened. The bomb never detonated. Many lives were spared.

The miracle of the unexploded bomb.

The shell of the bomb is still held in the church – proof of Dr Moscati protecting the people of Naples, even in death.

That same year, 1943, the whole city would rise up and kick the occupying Nazis out of the city. It’s quite a remarkable story.

Without any real organisation or proper arms, a spontaneous resistance rose up, led largely by teenagers and dock workers. They fought with whatever they could find, and literally drove German forces out of the city.

It became the first city in Europe to free itself. The whole of Naples was awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valour as a result.

The Mafia, Maradona, Metro stations and mass tourism

Much of Naples’ years after the Second World War were difficult. The old problems of overcrowding and poverty remained, and organised crime had a huge influence over the city. It’s this period that, in many people’s minds, still shapes the perception of the city.

In many ways, it still hadn’t come to terms with its reduced status – no longer a capital. And it didn’t help that its country, Italy, often looked down on it. A scourge on a growing nation, a place of poverty, crime and disease, a source of nothing but shame.

In this context, a small Argentinian named Maradona arrived in the 1980s. With him, the local football team won two league titles, and gave hope to a city that, to its own mind, had nothing else going for it.

When Maradona died in 2020, the football stadium was renamed after him. For the first time since he played for them, Napoli would go on to win the league in 2023, and then in 2025.

As much as Moscati before him, Maradona is essentially a saint in the city. This is nowhere more clear than Largo Maradona – Maradona Square.

In the heart of the Spanish Quarter, a part of the city originally built to house Spanish garrisons, it began as a mural by local artist Mario Filardi in 1990. Restored in 2017, the square is now filled with Maradona murals, merch stores, and plenty more. It ranks among Italy’s most photographed sites.

Modern Naples has also had something of a resurgence. A thriving university, growing levels of tourism, and modern art.

This is perhaps best summarised by its Metro stations, which are now considered art installations in their own right. The most famous can be found at Toledo, considered one of the most beautiful metro stations in Europe and themed around water.

There are two sides to this, though. Naples still struggles with its old problem – lack of space. This is joined by new challenges. Gentrification is especially intense in Naples, and overtourism is a real risk.

The city manages to hold all of these many selves together. It’s far from peaceful, and it certainly isn’t for everyone.

But it’s endlessly fascinating – a chaotic city on an organised grid system; the shame of Italy, a beautiful city; passion, pizza and Pompeii. Naples.

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