Crowded, loud, and colorful, Naples is a city for city-lovers. If you think New York City is bustling and lively, just wait until you get to Naples. The city has its grimy sections (as all cities do), but offers visitors dressed up shopping districts, shiny new boulevards lined with palm trees, and a bundle of historic piazzas.

The city of Naples has much to offer history buffs. The Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte particularly pleases art historians with many galleries featuring works by the likes of Botticelli, Masaccio, and Parmigianino. One gallery is dedicated to artists who spent part or all of their working life in Naples.

The Museo Archeologico Nazionale offers a different story. It is a museum where you can immerse yourself in history as items like wall hangings, floors, and decorative statues were taken from their original locations and are displayed much as they were previously rather than behind or under glass with little information cards beneath them. At this museum, you can even explore replicas of rooms from Pompeii buildings.

Naples is also an excellent jumping off point for visiting the ruined city of Pompeii. In the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, Pompeii sits an abandoned shell of its former glory. Life in Pompeii has been preserved as it was the day Vesuvius erupted and rained ash upon the population. Today you can tour the ancient streets, sit in the amphitheater, and study a few of the bodies of victims of the 79 AD volcanic eruption.

Pizza lovers rejoice at being in Naples: this is where the pizza was born. The traditional Neapolitan pizza is a Pizza Margherita, a pie topped simply with fresh mozzarella, basil, and tomatoes. Neapolitan’s use only the best quality, freshest ingredients baked onto a tasty, thin crust so that all the flavors of the pizza work well together to create something more than the sum of its parts. The best pizzas in Naples are simple. For example, a pizza marinara has just tomato sauce, garlic, herbs, and perhaps a touch of olive oil.

For dessert, haunt the pastry shops. Sfogliatella are layered pastries filled with ricotta, citrus fruit, and/or almonds. Another favorite is the baba, a small cake soaked in liquor and optionally filled with cream. Struffoli are tender, deep-fried spheres of dough that have been coated with honey and sometimes rolled in candied orange peel or other candies.

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