The beautiful chaos of Naples

Embracing and escaping the madness of this marvellous metropolis in late summer 2025

There’s something magical about arriving in a new city after dark, especially on a fragrant late summer’s evening. First impressions are a beautiful blur of feelings and sensations, any disappointing displays of ugliness are softened and the anticipation of that first aperitif and dinner after you drop off your bags is palpable. Never more so than on this particular occasion.

Our cab driver Giorgio is focussing 90% of his attention on watching the Napoli versus Pisa soccer game on his phone, as he scythes his way horn blaring through nighttime traffic into the gaping maw of this marvellously chaotic metropolis. We’ve only just arrived, but both of us already know we are going to love this city, if we make it out of his cab in one piece. Glimpses of elegantly dilapidated palazzi flash past as the home team score the winning goal seconds before the final whistle and the surrounding streets erupt in noisy celebration. Suddenly Giorgio is all solicitous attention and gingerly navigating the tangle of streets in the old Quartieri Spagnoli (Spanish Quarter), he makes sure we are let in to our apartment in adjoining Chiaia, before disappearing into the night for a proper victory celebration.

We had prepared for this visit by watching Paolo Sorrentino’s classic Naples set semi- autobiographical coming of age tragicomedy ‘Hand of God’. This wonderful film captures the joys, sorrows and struggles of Neapolitan family life against the backdrop of the city’s fervour for SSC Napoli, ignited as never before in the mid 1980s when Argentine superstar Diego Maradona is first persuaded to sign for the club and the galvanising effect that his extraordinary success with the team has on the entire community. A success which is remembered even today as Maradona has become this famously superstitious city’s talisman, superhero and patron saint, venerated everywhere in street art and shrines.

Arriving at our apartment, we are greeted effusively by Elena who bears a remarkable resemblance to the larger than life character of the protagonist’s mother in the movie and who in a bravura twenty minutes (which I wish I’d recorded) delivers an ostentatiously operatic orientation. Wasting no time, we open our account with Linguine con Vongole and a glass or two of Falanghina, this region’s wondrous white wine, at her closest restaurant recommendation, Osteria Napulion.

Like its Florida tribute act Naples has sultry, almost subtropical weather, so perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised at waking up to nearly ninety percent humidity and a dramatic deluge, but the steamy, sun-baked aftermath is utterly intoxicating as it bathes the streetscape in luminous light as we get our bearings in Chiaia (“Kyah-yah”) which is like a microcosm of the city’s different moods. Narrow, cobbled, noisy hillside streets lined with laundry-bedecked 18th century tenement buildings lead down to stately palazzi and boutique-lined Via Chiaia and the bay of Naples waterfront with its grand hotels, parade of seafood restaurants and views of Vesuvius.

Satisfyingly, Google Maps really struggles here, as Naples is so hilly that adjacent streets can easily be tens or even hundreds of feet above or below one another. Mastering the system of lifts and funiculars which date back to the 1880s is a must in the energy sapping heat, but the best escape from it of all is in the city’s ancient and modern subterranean underworlds. The city’s Metro, which without exaggeration bills itself as ‘the most beautiful subway system in the world”, is literally a series of air-conditioned art installations and just the latest expression of a 5,000 year old tradition of imaginative excavation.

The Greeks may have built Neapolis’s original city walls and temples in the IVth century BC by quarrying blocks of soft volcanic tufa stone on site, but it was the Romans who first fully realised its potential by constructing a 400km system of underground aqueducts to provide fresh water to eight cities in the Bay of Naples including Pompeii and Herculaneum. In Naples itself, in a further engineering marvel for the era, wells were sunk into the underground tunnels in the 17th century, so that every Neapolitan building had direct access to water. These deep tunnels were repurposed again as air raid shelters in 1944 and we visit a fragment of this system with Claudio, an amusing guide who shows us wartime graffiti poking fun of Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito and relates the origin story of the oldest and most powerful Neapolitan superstition about the tiny hooded figure of “Il Monaciello” (The Little Monk). Legend has it that he was a “pozzari” (caretaker) of the city’s wells who even today brings unexpected good fortune to those in need. So coming back full circle, the cult of Diego Maradona ‘El Pibe de Oro” (The Golden Boy) is just the latest in a long line of incarnations of Neapolitan magical thinking and of the longstanding local saying, “Non è vero, ma ci credo”.(“It’s not true but I believe it”).

Like Catania’s Mount Etna, Vesuvius looms over the Bay of Naples as an ever-present reminder of the importance of celebrating the random chaos and beauty of life every day and indeed nowhere we’ve visited in Italy embraces ‘La dolce vita” quite as intensely. Almost every viewing point is an excuse for a sunset Limoncello Spritz, while at street level the party seemingly never ends, whether it’s in the narrow, seething alleyways of old Chiaia, Montesanto or the Quartieri Spagnoli, or under the soaring glass of the Neo-Renaissance 19th Century Galleria Umberto.

Even in the stately halls of the Museo Arqueologico, which house arguably the most important collection of Greek, Roman and Renaissance Art in Italy, the cacophony of the city outside is ever present, as our ears are assaulted with a discordant symphony of car horns as we attempt fruitlessly to appreciate astonishingly intact statuary, frescoes and mosaics rescued from the ashes of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Fortunately there is an easy escape and on days when the intensity, heat and chaos of the city crosses the line from intoxicating to irritating, we hop on a ferry to decompress on one of the Bay of Naples islands. Capri is heaven on earth, but disappointingly given the lateness of the season it felt like we were sharing it with every cruise passenger touring the Amalfi coast, but tiny Procida which is just a half hour from the city’s port, while not quite living up to its description as ‘the Italian Riviera of the 1950s’ still retains an unhurried, ramshackle charm. This is an island of pastels and lemons so sweet that they slice them thinly, douse them with olive oil and sprinkle them with chill flakes to make a wonderfully refreshing Insalata di Limone. We enjoyed this dish as a starter at the tiny Marina Corricella quayside restaurant Il Pescatore, followed by Sautê di Frutti di Mare with three types of clams, Impepata di Cozze (tiny mussels steamed with black pepper and parsley) and Sorbetti di Limone, in what was easily the most relaxing of the many memorable meals we have eaten here.

At the other extreme, we risk life and limb in a cobblestoned alleyway of the Quartieri Spagnoli as cars, scooters and motorbikes whizz past inches away from our table and revel in the extraordinary sweetness of a Fritto Misto at hole in the wall Terra Mia Trattoria set amongst the seafood hawkers in gritty Montesanto.

However, it was on the city’s waterfront Lungomare that we ate especially well. Elena, our host had recommended Stella (“tourists don’t go there and that makes their prices much cheaper”), then there was the brilliantly named Officina del Mare, sandwiched between the ancient ramparts of Castel dell’Ovo and the ocean liner-like Grand Hotels, for more superb seafood. Our most memorable dish however, came by complete accident. Dodging a biblical downpour in Mergellina on the far western reaches of the Bay of Naples we ducked into the only seafood place that seemed to be open that mid-afternoon. Immediately we regret our decision, as it is a white tablecloth ‘Ristorante’ packed with elegantly stubbled, besuited businessmen of a certain age enjoying the dying embers of what had clearly been very long lunches. Ordering Spaghetti alla Pescatore more in hope than expectation, we hide our shorts under the creamy linen napery and are much more than pleasantly confounded, when our food arrives.

Perhaps we should have had the courage to try the tripe that was displayed like precious jewellery in a wall mounted glass case next a street food stall in the Quartieri Spagnoli, after all!

Spaghetti alla Pescatore: Serves Two

Regular readers will know that I have a very pleasurable obsession with this dish and though this particular version is not the absolute top of the tree (that prize goes to Il Gambero Pazzo’s in Catania), but Ristorante Ciro’s with its three types of clams ran it very close.

2 lbs mixed mussels and clams

4 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup dry white wine

250 gms or half a pound of spaghetti

EV olive oil

Black pepper to taste

Heat a large pot of water for the spaghetti and add salt; once the water is boiled add the spaghetti and cook until it is al dente.

Meanwhile, heat a large skillet with 2 tablespoons olive oil, add the garlic, mussels, clams and white wine; cover and steam until the shells have opened, then toss. When pasta is al dente drain it and add it to the seafood. Toss to coat the spaghetti with the juices. To finish, pour a decent glug of EV olive oil onto the dish and toss everything one final time, then transfer it to a serving dish along with any remaining juices.