Naples is Italy's largest coastal city and the capital of Campania, on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Its somewhat unfair reputation as being overrun by Italy's Mafia and unsafe has been tempered over the past decade, thanks to a focused governmental effort, and today Naples' young and creative population makes for a lively and entertaining atmosphere.

Inhabited for nearly 3,000 years, Neapolitan history is vast and deep. Thank Naples for pizza, first baked for the Queen 200 years ago, and Europe claims the Teatro San Carlo, built in 1737, as its oldest working theatre. For 2,000 years, sailors arriving at the port have been greeted by the sight of the armoured Castle of the Egg (Castel dell'Ovo), believed to be built on the site of a mystical egg buried in the sea. Lost for more than 1,600 years, an eruption in 79 AD left nearby Pompeii and Herculaneum frozen in time, blanketed in Vesuvius' ash and lava, and Pozzuoli has a 4,000 year-old crater that bubbles with muck and mire, once thought to be the gate to Hades.