Naples Transportation

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There only one main train station in napels, but with two names. The first name is Napoli FS or Naples Centrale Station. This station provided train to/from other city, outside Napoli. If you travel from Milan, Rome or pompeii, you will arrive at this station. Piazza Garibaldi, is another name of this station. But this station located underground of Centrale FS. to avoid confuse, if you took local train, or metro inside the city, you will arrive or see Piazza Garibaldi, and this is main station. Just go to 1si floor of this garibaldi station, you already in Napoli FS. Its not like other city where they use a same name. Here, they use a different to describe that one for to/from other city, and one for metro.

There are several suburban trains lines that link Napoli/Naples with some other destinations along the bay. All of them receive the common name of Vesuviana. The most important is the line Napoli-Sorrento, city at the end of the bay.

You can take these lines at Napoli Porta Nolana station (Corso Garibaldi) or Stazione Centrale (Piazza Garibaldi).

If you want to go to Pompei, you have to go to Pompei Scavi (line Napoli-Sorrento). For more info about Pompeii, visit my page on this place.

The pic shows the first station.

Road distances to Napoli/Naples from:

- Roma/Rome: 229 kms.
- Brno (Czech Republic): 1.446 kms.
- Madrid (Spain): 2.158 kms.
- Odessa (Ukraine): 2.673 kms.

If you check the web, you will find more road distances together with driving distances and the best routes.

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We made several day trips out of Naples and found it very easy to do this by train, so don’t think you need to rely on expensive sightseeing tours to get to the various places of interest. There’s a great little line called the Circumvesuviana that leaves from an off-shoot of the Centrale railway station. You can buy your tickets at a counter there, or in the main ticket office (where you need to go to the specially indicated counters – 7 & 8 when we were there). We tried both and found the former was quicker so I suggest you head straight to that area of the station.

Trains seemed to be pretty frequent (the longest we waited was about 20 minutes for one of our return journeys). The line goes through Ercolano (for the ruins at Herculaneum) about 20 minutes out of Naples, Pompeii after a further 15-20 minutes, and reaches Sorrento (the end of the line) in about 1 hour 15 minutes. The scenery, especially for the second half of the journey, is lovely – try to sit on the right going / left coming back if you want good views of the bay.

Tickets are really good value. We paid €1.70 for each single weekday journey (November 2007 prices) to Ercolano and Pompeii, and at the weekend were offered a €5 pass to cover multiple journeys, which took us all the way to Sorrento and back. It’s also very convenient – at Pompeii the station is almost opposite the main entrance to the ruins, although in Ercolano you’ll have about a 10 minute walk to them, and in Sorrento just a few minutes into the central square.

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The funicular lines make up the third element of the city’s transport system. There are three of them, two starting from various points just off the north-south Via Toledo and one further west in the Chiaia district. All three take you to the hilltop area of Vomero with its smart apartment blocks and shopping streets, the Castel Sant’ Elmo and great views of the city below.

Yet again you can make use of the same €1 that you need for the buses and metro, although for the quick journey uphill they maybe seem less of a bargain. One thing that surprised me was that the funicular lines (or at least the two we used) run underground – I’d expected to get good views as we climbed but that wasn’t the case. Still, they are a good way to get up a very steep hill pretty quickly!

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There are currently just two metro lines in central Naples and the areas they serve are therefore somewhat limited, but we found them useful on occasion, and it’s certainly quicker than taking the bus. Line One, part of which is still under construction, is the more modern, with bright stations decorated with interesting art-works and clean trains. Line Two is older, and the trains are more like conventional and rather scruffy suburban ones than inner city metro style ones. We found the stretch of Line Two that links Montesanto (not far from the historic district) with the central railway station to be the most useful as we were going on several trips out of the city for which we needed the Circumvesuviano route that leaves from a station to the side of the main one. This is the older of the two, with rather scruffy trains, whereas Line One has newer trains and some very attractive stations with lots of modern art.

As with the buses, you need to buy your ticket in advance from a Tabacchi – look for the letter T on a shop sign. The same tickets are interchangeable between the bus and metro, so buy a few when you first arrive and use them for either. Validate your ticket at the turnstile as you enter the metro system. As with the buses, you can then travel on the same €1 for 90 minutes (which would be hard to exceed on this limited system). This seemed great value to us – you can’t go even one stop on the London Underground for this amount!

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Once we got used to the system we found the buses an interesting, if slow, way to travel around the city. I never tired of watching the traffic here – the way even the youngest scooter-drivers weave effortlessly if precariously round the cars and other large vehicles; the way pedestrians step out just knowing that the traffic will somehow magically halt for them; the drivers we saw reading newspapers, drinking coffee and even taking down notes from a phone-call while at the wheel.

Bus travel is cheap, or seemed so to us, used to London transport costs. A single journey, when we were there in November 2007, costed just €1 for up to 90 minutes continuous travel (i.e. including a change of buses if needed). You need to buy your ticket in advance from a Tabacchi – look for the letter T on a shop sign. We found one just a few doors from our hotel in Via Francesco Saverio Correra and would pop in each morning to buy the number we thought we would need for the day.

You’re supposed to enter the bus from the doors at the front or rear and leave the central door for those exiting, but most people seemed happy to ignore this, especially when the bus was crowded and moving around inside difficult. Once on board you need to validate your ticket in the machines – then settle back, or hang on, for the ride!

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We flew to Naples with British Airways from London Gatwick, and were able to get a reasonably priced flight by choosing one that arrived in the early evening. The airport is near the city centre, just 7 km to the north east, and for an international airport struck me as being on the small side (though I noticed when we left that it’s being refurbished and I think extended).

To get to the city centre you have a choice of two buses – the direct airport special, Alibus, or the local bus number 3S. Both of these run to Napoli Centrale railway station and the Piazza Municipio in the centre of Naples. We took the latter, mainly because we saw it was almost empty whereas we would have had to stand in the Alibus. We hadn’t realised however that we should have bought a standard bus ticket somewhere in the airport before boarding, but the bus driver simply shrugged and let us travel for free – I’m not sure what would have happened if an inspector had got on though.

Arriving in the huge Piazza Garibaldi in front of the Centrale railway station on a damp and dark November evening was a little disorientating. We wanted to get another bus to the Piazza Dante but found the system of bus stops and signs unfathomable in the dark – and although people were happy to give advice when asked, it was rather conflicting! So we gave up and hauled the suitcase to the Metro station where the system and signs were much easier for newly arrived visitors to work out.

More on the buses and Metro in my other tips