5 Best Pizza in Naples I’d Actually Recommend (After Eating My Way Through the City)

You’ve probably already seen the photos of the queue outside the most famous pizzeria in Naples.

Here’s what nobody tells you: you don’t need to join it.

I didn’t have one bad pizza in four days in this city, which is both the joy of Naples and the reason a top five is so hard to pin down.

So I ranked mine properly. Five places I actually ate at, in order, with the one I’d send you to first if you’ve only got one night.

This is for first-timers with a few days who’d rather eat like someone who lives here than queue like someone who doesn’t.

1. Vincenzo Capasso

This one came straight from my accommodation, and it might be my favourite of the four I actually ate at.

It’s a small, quiet spot tucked on a popular street where I was told a few famous names have eaten.

I went early afternoon so I had the place almost to myself, though I understand it gets packed later on.

🍽️ What I ordered: A capricciosa pizza, an espresso, a water and a Coke Zero.

💰 What I paid: €18 all up, and the staff threw in a free espresso on top of that.

If you’ve never ordered a capricciosa, the name is the clue.

It means capricious, or whimsical, and it got that name because the toppings were originally whatever the pizzaiolo felt like putting on that day.

It settled into a fairly standard combination over time: ham, mushrooms, artichokes and olives, sometimes with an egg or an anchovy depending on who’s making it.

But it’s still the one pizza on a Neapolitan menu where two places can hand you genuinely different things under the same name.

Which makes it a decent test of a kitchen, and this one passed.

Also this pizzeria is not far from where you start the Underground Naples tour so grab a pizza after all the walking tour!

2. Gino Sorbillo Vomero

My first pizza in Naples came from here, ordered for delivery through Glovo after another restaurant left me waiting an hour and a half with nothing to show for it.

Gino Sorbillo is one of the more recognised pizza names in Naples, and I ordered the Margherita di Bufala DOP along with a fried pizza to try, since I’d heard that was a genuine Neapolitan speciality.

The fried version exists because ordinary Neapolitans historically couldn’t always afford, or have access to, a proper oven, so frying became the workaround, and it’s now a dish in its own right, one that made my list of 10 foods I tried in Naples and loved.

This might genuinely be the best pizza I’ve ever had, and the crust here is a good example of something worth knowing before you visit Naples: it’s soft and delicate rather than crispy, so don’t expect it to hold together like a foldable slice back home.

3. Pizzeria Trianon

I ordered a pizza with olives, anchovies, tomatoes and garlic. Simple, salty, and genuinely one of the best crusts I had all trip.

No cheese on it, which sounds like a mistake until you realise that’s the older pizza.

Naples was topping flatbread with tomato, garlic and oil long before mozzarella turned up on it, and the no-cheese versions are still on the menu in the historic places.

It sits just around the corner from Da Michele, the pizzeria made famous by Eat Pray Love, which multiple locals warned me away from. Overly commercialised now, they said, with a drop in quality to match.

I skipped it entirely on local advice and went to Trianon instead. I’d make the same call again.

There’s a practical reason this swap works so well, and it’s not just the food.

Trianon has been going since 1923, opened by Ciro Leone and his wife Giorgina De Somma, and named after the theatre a few doors down.

The actors came in after their shows. Totò ate here, and so did Macario and Nino Taranto.

Their signature is the ruota di carretto, the cart wheel. A thin base about 35cm across, made that big between the wars so one pizza could feed a person for the day.

The place runs over three floors, each with its own oven.

Which is why there’s no queue here while the one round the corner has people standing outside for an hour, and why the menu runs to dozens of pizzas rather than the famous two.

It’s also handy for the day trips heading down to Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast, which leave from nearby, so if you’re coming back from that daytrip, go grab a pizza on your way home!

4. Errico Porzio

A local recommended this one to me late in the trip, and I ran out of time.

So I’ll be upfront: this is a recommendation, not a review. I haven’t eaten here.

I’m including it anyway, because of who’s behind it.

Errico Porzio comes from a Neapolitan pizza-making family and started working in an oven at 13.

He took over the family pizzeria in Soccavo, out in the western part of the city, and built it into a name known well beyond Naples, largely off the back of his own social following. His motto is sadda sapè fa, which is Neapolitan for “you have to know how to do it.”

The pizza is traditional Neapolitan with a lot of attention on dough hydration and long fermentation, and toppings that get more adventurous than most places would risk.

It also lands consistently on 50 Top Pizza’s ranking of the world’s best artisan pizza chains, which is an industry list rather than a tourist one.

One practical thing to know before you set off.

There are several Porzio locations, including the original in Soccavo, one up in Vomero and one on the waterfront at Via Partenope with tables facing the sea.

They aren’t interchangeable. Soccavo is the original and it’s a residential neighbourhood well outside the centre, so check which one you’re heading to before you get in a taxi.

Time goes fast on a trip this short, which is exactly how I missed it. More on fitting it all in over in my three days in Naples guide.

5. San Carlo 17

This was one of the final stops on my street food tour with Eating Europe, and it was one of my favourite pizza experiences of the trip, exactly the kind of moment that makes me say Naples is worth visiting to anyone who’ll listen.

🍽️ What I ordered: Rocket, buffalo mozzarella and tomatoes as a starter, then a proper margherita pizza, with a glass of wine and a glass of limoncello included.

The interior alone made it worth the visit, old, characterful, covered in vintage souvenirs and photos, the kind of place I’d have walked straight past without a local guide pointing it out.

They also run cooking classes here if you want to actually learn how to make Neapolitan pizza and pasta yourself before you leave which is a top thing to do in the city of Naples during your holiday!

A quick note on eating pizza like a local

Whichever of these you pick, don’t expect to fold your slice in half and eat it standing up the way you might at home.

The dough here barely holds its own weight, so a knife and fork is the move, at least for the first few bites before the base firms up slightly.

Queues at the more famous spots swing a lot depending on the best time to visit Naples, so plan around that if you’re set on a particular place.

The Art of the Neapolitan Pizzaiuolo is on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, and what’s protected isn’t the pizza.

It’s the craft. The knowledge held by the people who make it, the way it gets passed from one pizzaiolo to the next, the whole culture that surrounds it in this city.

You can taste that difference. It’s why a place that’s been going since 1923 still has a queue of locals, and why the pizzaiolo’s name matters here in a way it doesn’t anywhere else.

It’s also why I didn’t have one bad pizza in four days.

That’s the honest headline of this whole list.

Every one of these was good.

The ranking was hard because the floor is so high, not because the top is so far above everything else.

If you take one thing from this post, it’s the same advice a local gave me: don’t queue for an hour outside the famous one.

Walk another two minutes and eat somewhere just as good with a table free.

For everywhere else I ate that wasn’t pizza, there’s a full guide to eating your way around Naples.