Every city in Campania | Italia Magnifica

Every city in Campania

From the capital to the smallest borghi.

NaplesThe capitalThe unruly, magnificent capital of the south, where Spaccanapoli cuts dead-straight through a Greek street grid and Caravaggio shares the city with the Veiled Christ in the Sansevero Chapel. The Archaeological Museum guards Pompeii's treasures, and the world's first pizza was born in these alleys.
AgropoliThe gateway to the Cilento coast, a harbor town south of Salerno where a medieval old quarter climbs to an Aragonese castle above the sea, marking the start of the long, wild Cilento shoreline.
AnacapriCapri's quieter upper town, reached by a switchback road or the open chairlift to Monte Solaro. Here Axel Munthe built Villa San Michele, its pergola and Egyptian sphinx looking out over one of the Mediterranean's grandest views.
AtraniItaly's smallest municipality by area, wedged into a ravine beside Amalfi, where a knot of arches, stairways and a piazza opening onto the beach has scarcely changed in centuries.
AvellinoAn inland provincial capital in the green hills of Irpinia, set in chestnut and hazelnut country among the vineyards that produce some of Campania's finest wines.
BacoliA town on the Campi Flegrei coast west of Naples, riddled with Roman engineering. Beneath it lies the Piscina Mirabilis, a vast cathedral-like cistern of forty-eight pillars that once stored water for the imperial fleet at Misenum.
BattipagliaA busy market town on the plain south of Salerno, at the heart of buffalo-farming country where the herds graze that yield Mozzarella di Bufala Campana, the region's prized fresh cheese.
BeneventoAn inland city of layered history, where Trajan's Arch still stands in near-perfect Roman marble and a Lombard-era past survives in the cloister of Santa Sofia. Benevento is wrapped in old legends of witches and gives its name to the Strega liqueur.
Capaccio Paestum
CasertaHome to the colossal Royal Palace of Caserta, the Bourbon answer to Versailles, with twelve hundred rooms, a grand staircase and a three-kilometer water axis tumbling through formal gardens to a cascade.
Castellammare di StabiaA shipbuilding port at the foot of the Monti Lattari, long known for its mineral springs and thermal baths, and the site of ancient Stabiae, the seaside resort buried alongside Pompeii in 79 AD.
Cava de' TirreniAn inland town in a green valley between Salerno and the Amalfi Coast, known for its long arcaded main street and the Benedictine abbey of the Santissima Trinità, founded in the eleventh century.
CetaraA working fishing village on the eastern Amalfi Coast, famous across Italy for its anchovies and for colatura di alici, an amber fish sauce descended from the Roman garum that dresses the village's spaghetti.
Conca dei MariniA tiny Amalfi Coast village of whitewashed houses tumbling toward a sheltered cove, best known for the Grotta dello Smeraldo, a sea cave lit an unearthly emerald by light filtering up from below.
CumaThe first Greek colony on the Italian mainland, on the Campi Flegrei coast. Its archaeological park holds the Cave of the Sibyl, the long rock-cut gallery where Virgil placed the prophetess who guided Aeneas to the underworld.
FuroreA village strung along the heights of the Amalfi Coast, famous for the Fjord of Furore, a narrow cleft in the cliffs where a fishermen's hamlet huddles beneath a high arched bridge.
Giugliano in CampaniaA large, fast-growing town on the fertile plain north of Naples, set between the city's sprawl and the volcanic coast of the Campi Flegrei. Giugliano belongs to the everyday Campania of market gardens and busy local life rather than the tourist coast.
HerculaneumA smaller, wealthier neighbor of Pompeii, buried by the same eruption but sealed under deep volcanic mud that preserved it more completely. Carbonized wooden balconies, upper floors and even furniture survive in its excavated streets.
IschiaThe largest island in the Bay of Naples, a green volcanic dome famous for its thermal spas and hot springs. Its emblem is the Castello Aragonese, a fortress crowning a rocky islet linked to the town by a causeway.
MaioriAn Amalfi Coast resort with the longest beach on the coastline, rebuilt after a 1954 flood and backed by terraced lemon groves and the Norman tower of the Castello di San Nicola de Thoro-Plano.
Massa LubrenseA scattered township at the tip of the Sorrentine Peninsula, looking across the strait to Capri, with quiet coves, olive terraces and the marine reserve of Punta Campanella.
MetaA small town at the eastern gateway of the Sorrentine Peninsula, with one of the area's broadest beaches in the cove of Marina di Meta beneath the tufa cliffs.
MinoriA small Amalfi Coast town beside Maiori, set in a valley of lemon terraces and known for its Roman maritime villa and a long tradition of pasta-making and pastry.
Nocera InferioreA town in the fertile Agro Nocerino-Sarnese plain between Naples and Salerno, ringed by tomato fields and overlooked by a medieval hilltop fortress, the Castello del Parco.
Piano di SorrentoA town on the plateau at the center of the Sorrentine Peninsula, set among citrus and olive groves above small marinas on the bay, with a strong seafaring history.
PorticiA dense coastal town on the slopes below Vesuvius, just southeast of Naples, where Bourbon nobility once built their summer villas along the so-called Golden Mile facing the bay.
PozzuoliThe heart of the Campi Flegrei, a volcanic landscape of steaming fumaroles west of Naples. Pozzuoli holds the third-largest Roman amphitheater in Italy, its underground machinery still intact beneath the arena floor.
PraianoA quieter Amalfi Coast village between Positano and Amalfi, draped over a headland famous for its sunsets, with steep stair-paths leading down to the small cove of Marina di Praia.
RavelloThe Amalfi Coast's serene aerie, set high above the sea on a ridge of gardens. Villa Rufolo's belvedere so moved Wagner that he set Parsifal's enchanted garden here, while Villa Cimbrone's Terrace of Infinity hangs marble busts over the void.
SalernoA lively port city and the gateway to the Amalfi Coast, with a long seafront promenade and a medieval quarter rising to a Norman cathedral. Salerno was home to the Schola Medica Salernitana, medieval Europe's first medical school.
San Giorgio a CremanoA densely built town on the Vesuvian slopes just east of Naples, part of the historic ring of Bourbon-era villas known as the Miglio d'Oro and birthplace of the actor Massimo Troisi.
Sant'Agata sui Due GolfiA hilltop village near the tip of the Sorrentine Peninsula, named for the two gulfs, Naples and Salerno, that open out on either side from the nearby Deserto belvedere.
Sant'AgnelloA quiet town on the Sorrentine Peninsula, set on the tufa cliffs between Sorrento and Piano di Sorrento, with belle-époque hotels and gardens looking across the bay to Vesuvius.
SapriA seaside town at the far southern edge of Campania, set on a deep gulf where the Cilento coast gives way to Basilicata, with pebble beaches and a long Risorgimento history.
ScalaThe oldest settlement on the Amalfi Coast, a scatter of hamlets on the wooded heights across the valley from Ravello, with terraces of vines and lemons and long views down to the sea.
SorrentoThe grande dame of the Sorrentine Peninsula, set on tufa cliffs above the bay with grand hotels, orange and lemon groves, and views to Vesuvius. Its famous lemons perfume the limoncello poured all along this coast.
Torre AnnunziataA coastal town below Vesuvius south of Naples, home to Villa Oplontis, the lavish seaside residence linked to Nero's wife Poppaea, its second-style frescoes and sixty-meter pool sealed by the same eruption that buried Pompeii.
Torre del GrecoA coastal town on the lower slopes of Vesuvius, the historic center of Italian coral and cameo working. It sits at the foot of the volcano whose crater rim, reached from here, opens onto the whole sweep of the Bay of Naples.
TramontiA spread of thirteen hamlets in the high, green hinterland of the Amalfi Coast, known for its lemon terraces and limoncello, and as a cradle of pizza-makers who carried the Neapolitan craft across Italy.
Vietri sul MareThe first town on the Amalfi Coast coming from Salerno, celebrated for its centuries-old ceramic craft. Its hand-painted majolica, in bright blues, greens and yellows, tiles shopfronts, church domes and tables across Italy.
PompeiiThe Roman city frozen in time by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, its streets, frescoed villas, forum and amphitheater preserved beneath ash. The vast excavation is one of the most extraordinary windows onto daily life in the ancient world.
CapriThe glamorous limestone island off the Sorrentine Peninsula, a magnet for the jet set since Roman emperors built their villas here. Boats slip into the Blue Grotto's electric-blue cave, and the three Faraglioni sea stacks rise from the water off Punta Tragara.
PositanoThe most photographed village on the Amalfi Coast, a vertical cascade of pastel houses pouring down the cliff to Spiaggia Grande, crowned by the majolica-tiled dome of Santa Maria Assunta. Its stairway lanes brim with linen boutiques and bougainvillea.
AmalfiThe coast's namesake town, once a powerful maritime republic that rivaled Venice and Genoa. Its cathedral crowns a sweep of sixty-two steps behind an Arab-Norman facade, and the town keeps a centuries-old tradition of handmade paper.