Historic centre and Spaccanapoli
A straight street cutting the Greek city in two, with three thousand years of layers beneath.
Duration
2 hrs 30 min – 5 hrs
Best time
Mid-morning
Open
Every day
Entry price
Free
Spaccanapoli — the one that splits Naples — is the lower decumanus of the Greek city of Neapolis, laid out in the fifth century BC and never shifted since: two perfectly straight kilometres, a few metres wide, between seven-storey blocks. The Greco-Roman plan is still legible in the land registry.
Beneath the paving, forty metres down, runs a network of cisterns and aqueducts cut into the tufa by the Greeks, enlarged by the Romans and reused as air-raid shelters in 1943. The whole historic centre is listed, and it is the largest in Europe.
Getting there
Metro line 1, Dante or Duomo station. The street is walked end to end; no car passes along most of it.
Rules on site
Scooters ride on the pavements where there are any: walk with your ears open. Bag and phone snatches from a moving scooter do happen, mostly near the main arteries — bag on the wall side.
