3 Days in Naples: The Itinerary I’d Actually Follow (After 4 Nights There)
Type “3 days in Naples” into Google and you’ll get twenty nearly identical lists of the same six attractions, in no particular order, with zero indication of which ones will leave you starving, sunburnt or stuck behind a tour bus.
None of them will tell you that doing the food tour on my last day instead of my first was one of my actual regrets, or that there’s a pizzeria near the famous Eat Pray Love one that you should walk straight past.
I spent four nights in Naples this August, packed almost everything I wanted to do into three of them, and came home rewriting my own itinerary within a week because I’d done half of it backwards.
This is for anyone landing in Naples with three full days, a plan to eat an unreasonable amount of pizza, and zero interest in figuring out the order as they go.
This is the sequence I’d actually follow, mistakes included.
Quick look before we start
- Day 1: food tour with Eating Europe, the Royal Palace, a spritz in the Spanish Quarter, pizza
- Day 2: Napoli Sotterranea (early, booked online), wandering the historic centre, more pizza
- Day 3: Pompeii, with or without the Amalfi Coast tacked on, seaside dinner
Getting around Naples
Naples is walkable, and I did almost the entire trip on foot without really trying.
I only took a taxi twice: once to and from the Airport into the city, once back from the Spanish Quarter, both booked through Uber.
A 15-20 minute ride cost me somewhere between €20 and €25, which is genuinely more than I’ve paid for the same length ride in most other European cities, so budget for it if you’re not planning to walk everywhere like I did.
For anything further out, Pompeii, Sorrento, the Amalfi Coast, don’t bother working out the public transport yourself.
Book an organised day trip. That’s what I did and I’d do it again without thinking twice!
Day 1: the food tour I should have done first
Here’s the thing I’d change most about my whole trip: I did the Eating Europe food tour on my last day in Naples, and it should have been my first.
Book it for the morning of day one, 10am to 1pm, with Eating Europe. Book the food tour here →
The guide I had, Aldo, grew up near Naples and turned what I expected to be a snack crawl into an actual history lesson: the Kingdom of Naples, the Spanish Quarter’s reputation, how Naples has its own language.
You’ll eat spaghetti with San Marzano tomatoes grown near Vesuvius (properly sweet, not the flavourless kind), a fried pasta fritter as street food, a full margherita pizza, buffalo mozzarella, and finish on gelato from a place that’s been open for 40 years.
I got melon. Correct choice!
Aldo also taught us scarpetta, wiping your leftover bread round the sauce at the end of the meal, which I now do at home and feel smug about.
Do not eat breakfast beforehand. You will leave with a full belly, a full heart and a brain full of local knowledge, and you’ll still be full four hours later.
Half of what you’ll eat on that tour ended up on my list of 10 foods I tried in Naples and loved.
Once you’ve recovered (and you will need to), head to the Royal Palace of Naples. I paid €15, and the staircase alone is worth it, apparently it partly inspired the one in Cinderella, which is exactly the kind of fact a food tour guide drops on you and then you can’t stop thinking about it. Check current prices and availability here →
Give it an hour and a half. There weren’t many other visitors when I went, which genuinely surprised me.
From there, grab a spritz in the Spanish Quarter. An Aperol Spritz to go costs around €1.50 if you find a spot doing them cheap, or head to Cammarota Spritz, which locals recommend specifically for their pink and limoncello versions.
If you have energy left, the Archaeological Museum is meant to be excellent, Aldo called it his favourite thing to do in the whole city, though I ran out of time and never made it myself.
For dinner, go to Vincenzo Capasso. I had the capricciosa with a water, coke and an espresso for €18 total, and they gave me the espresso on the house.
One thing to skip: the pizzeria made famous by Eat Pray Love.
Multiple locals told me not to bother, it’s been commercialised and the quality has dropped. I listened to them and I’m glad I did!
Day 2
Book Napoli Sotterranea (underground city) online before you land in Naples. Don’t leave this to chance. Book it here →
I did it on my last day and regretted that too.
By late August the walk-up queue was long enough that people without pre-booked tickets were being turned away outright.
Late August is peak season in Naples, and queues like that are a big part of why, more on that in my best time to visit Naples guide.
Go for the earliest slot you can get.
I have ADHD, and by the time our guide was mid-explanation, three other tour groups were talking over him in the same tunnel and I couldn’t follow a word he said.
Once you’re down there, it’s genuinely wild: aqueducts, Bourbon tunnels, and a Roman theatre that archaeologists found underneath an old woman’s apartment. Her bed had been sitting directly over the entrance the whole time!
They can’t excavate any further because the surrounding apartments are still privately owned, so somewhere in Naples right now, someone has an ancient Roman theatre in their back garden and doesn’t even think about it.
Tours run roughly hourly from around 9am to 6pm and last about an hour.
Spend the rest of the day wandering the historic centre on foot.
I stumbled onto the Duomo di Santa Maria Assunta with no plan at all and stood there a bit stunned. It’s free to enter, and I studied interior design at school, so old buildings do this to me every time.
There’s a smaller church nearby that wanted an entry ticket, which struck me as strange for a place of worship, so I just admired it from the door instead.
I’m still annoyed I didn’t get to the Chiostro di Santa Chiara.
Everyone says the cloisters are beautiful and peaceful, and I ran out of days before I ran out of things I wanted to see.
Finish with pizza again, this time at Trianon, just round the corner from the famous one, and if you want more meal by meal detail, I’ve written up where to eat in Naples properly.
I got olives, anchovies, tomato and garlic, and the crust was salty and delicious, easily worth it on its own.
Day 3: Pompeii, and the decision you need to make
This is the day with a fork in it, so decide before you book.
Option A: just Pompeii. Buy your ticket (around €20) and add a guide (around €15). It’s worth it! Pompeii is 165 acres, 40 of which still aren’t excavated, and you can properly lose a day in it without ever touching the Amalfi Coast.
Option B: Pompeii plus Amalfi and Sorrento in one long day. This is what I did, a day tour through Viator for $107, with a guide named Ani, originally from India, who moved to Italy three or four years ago and learned to cook Italian food before he’d even set foot in the country.
Pickup was 8.15 to 8.30am from a hotel eight minutes’ walk from where I was staying, and we weren’t back in Naples until just before 5pm. It is a long, long day.
We stopped for Amalfi Coast views, had a limoncello tasting and lunch in Sorrento, and finished at Pompeii, where a separate local guide walked us through it, including the detail that’s stuck with me since: he mentioned a mother and son found together in the ash, still holding onto each other.
If it’s high season and there are cruise ships in port, expect the Amalfi Coast to be backed up.
I would only do the longer version of this tour, the one that actually stops in Positano itself rather than just seeing it in the distance like I did, in the off season, because of the traffic.
It was brutally hot by the end.
Bring a fan, more water than feels necessary, and don’t wear yourself out before Pompeii, since that’s the part with no shade at all.
For dinner back in Naples, my host recommended La Bersagliera, right by Castel dell’Ovo, or Palazzo Petrucci if you want to go all out, it’s Michelin starred with views over the bay and Vesuvius.
I didn’t make it to either myself, so take that as a local’s word rather than mine.
If you only have the 3 days
Don’t try to add a fourth thing to any of these days.
I had four nights here and still didn’t get to the Chiostro, so build in slack rather than overpacking.
Honestly, I almost didn’t come to Naples at all.
I’d heard the same warnings everyone hears, not safe, not worth it, and I’d more or less written it off until I found a cheap flight here on my way to see a friend in Portugal and figured I may as well use the stopover properly.
I was travelling solo as a woman and genuinely nervous on day one.
By the end I’d decided the reputation says more about who’s repeating it than about the city itself, and I’m already looking at flights back!
