Written by RuinMyTrip Editorial from published research and official sources, not from a personal trip. It is not a traveler review and is never counted in the community rating. How we research.
destination · Naples
Naples in 2026: 20 million visitors, over 10,000 Airbnb listings, and a Pompeii capped at 20,000 people a day
Review of Naples
Been to Naples? This page needs you more than it needs us.
A first-hand review outranks desk research every time, and yours will sit above this one.
Share your experienceNaples spent decades as the Italian city people were told to skip, and it has spent the last three years being discovered so fast that the city is now arguing with itself about it. Naples closed 2025 having crossed 20 million visitors for the first time in its history, up from around 13 million in 2023, and the city administration's stated target for 2026 is 24 million. That is a scale of growth no historic centre absorbs quietly, and Naples has not. The pressure shows up in housing first. There are now more than 10,000 tourist apartments listed on Airbnb in Naples, more short-term rental supply than Venice has, and listings rose 553 per cent between 2015 and 2019, concentrated in the poorest neighbourhoods of the centre. Rents have gone up about 40 per cent and residents have been pushed out of the same streets the visitors come to see. An Ipsos survey found 46 per cent of Neapolitans now consider overtourism a problem and 58 per cent want short-term rentals regulated more tightly. The visible version of this is a hardware shop on Spaccanapoli that now sells only souvenirs, and a historic centre that increasingly performs a version of itself. The second thing to plan around is theft. Naples has a genuinely high pickpocketing risk, concentrated in exactly the places visitors stand: the crowded stretch of the centro storico, the metro and buses, and the area around the central station. The methods are consistent rather than creative, teams working a distraction while an accomplice goes through a bag, and scooter riders taking phones and bags from people walking near the kerb. Bag snatching is specifically common on the Circumvesuviana, which is the same train line every visitor takes to Pompeii, Herculaneum and Sorrento. This is property crime, not violence, and it responds almost entirely to not carrying your phone in your hand on a busy street. Pompeii, the reason a lot of people come at all, has changed how it works. After passing four million visitors in 2024, an all-time record, the Parco Archeologico introduced named, personal tickets and a hard cap of 20,000 admissions a day in November 2024. Between 16 March and 14 October the day is split into two bands: a maximum of 15,000 admissions between 09:00 and 13:00, and a maximum of 5,000 between 13:00 and 17:30. In peak summer the morning band sells out days ahead. Current prices are 20 euros for the express ticket covering the ancient city only, 25 euros for the full ticket that adds the suburban villas and Villa Regina at Boscoreale, 30 euros for a three-day multi-site pass including Oplontis and the Stabiae villas, and 45 euros for an annual pass. EU citizens aged 18 to 25 pay 2 euros. What has not changed is why Naples is worth the aggravation, and it is mostly the value. This is the cheapest major city in Italy to eat and drink well in by a wide margin, the archaeological museum holds the finds that make Pompeii legible, and the city is unusually alive at street level in a way that Venice and Florence no longer are outside working hours. The tourist-facing tier exists here as everywhere, but the gap between the tourist price and the local price in Naples is measured in a few euros rather than in multiples.
What was great
Naples is the best value of any major Italian city: a full pizza and a drink for what a coperto costs in Venice, and a food culture that has not been priced into a museum piece. The Museo Archeologico Nazionale holds the mosaics, frescoes and bronzes lifted from Pompeii and Herculaneum, which is the context that makes the sites themselves make sense. Pompeii, Herculaneum and Vesuvius are all inside an hour by train. And unlike most heavily visited Italian centres, the historic core is still a working residential city rather than a shopfront, at least for now.
What nearly ruined the trip
Growth is outrunning the city. Naples went past 20 million visitors in 2025 and is targeting 24 million for 2026, with more than 10,000 Airbnb listings, rents up around 40 per cent, and 46 per cent of residents calling overtourism a problem. Pickpocketing is a high and organised risk in the centre, on public transport and around the central station, with scooter snatches and bag theft on the Circumvesuviana line to Pompeii. And Pompeii itself is now a timed, capped and named-ticket site: 20,000 a day, 15,000 of them in the morning band, which sells out days ahead in summer.
Safety
★★★☆☆ MixedValue for money
★★★★★ BargainComments
No comments yet.