The Amalfi Coast - Positano, Italy

UNESCO World Heritage Site 

It's hard to keep your eyes on the road while zipping along the dazzling landscape of the vertiginous Amalfi Drive, an improbable 30-mile stretch of hairpin curves south of Naples. After visiting the Amalfi coast, a giddy André Gide wrote in The Immoralist that "nothing more beautiful can be seen on this earth." Vertical cliffs plunge into an impossibly blue Mediterranean, as a coastline of seaside towns unfolds among terraced olive and lemon groves, oaks, and umbrella pines. No longer as remote as when arrival was possible only by sea or pack animal, the cliff-hanging town of Positano is still the ultimate refuge. Mercifully closed to traffic, the town´s jumble of converted whitewashed and pastel fishermen´s homes spills down a maze of narrow alleyways to the pebbly umbrella-lined beach, the only flat strip in town. It is here that tanned, handsome Sergio will pick you up and spirit you away to Da Adolfo in his family´s motor launch (look for the boat with the big red fish), far from Positano´s crowded beach scene and past the Hotel San Pietro so you can revel in an afternoon of sybaritic indulgence on a secluded slip of a beach. This is the region that gives the world fresh mozzarella di bufala; imagine how heavenly it tastes when it is grilled on a fragrant lemon leaf and served under the warm Neapolitan sun.

Pompei Ruins - Naples, Italy

Pompeii is a ruined and partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. Along with Herculaneum, its sister city, Pompeii was destroyed and completely buried during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning two days in 79 AD. The eruption buried Pompeii under 4 to 6 meters of ash and pumice, and it was lost for nearly 1,600 years before its accidental rediscovery around 1592. Since then, its excavation has provided an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city at the height of the Roman Empire. Today, this UNESCO World Heritage Site is one of the most popular tourist attractions of Italy, with approximately 2,500,000 visitors every year.

Castel dell'Ovo - Naples, Italy

Castel dell'Ovo (in Italian, Egg Castle) is a castle located on the former island of Megaride, now a peninsula, on the gulf of Naples (Southern Italy). The castle's name comes from a medieval legend which tells that the Roman poet Virgil, who developed a medieval reputation as a great sorcerer as well, put a magical egg in the foundations to support them.
The island of Megaride was where Greek colonists from Cumae founded the original nucleus of the city in the sixth century BC. Its location affords it an excellent view of the Naples waterfront and the surrounding area. In the first century BC the Roman patrician Lucius Licinius Lucullus built the magnificent villa Castellum Lucullanum on the site. Fortified by Valentinian III in the mid-fifth century, it was the place to which the last western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was exiled in in 476. Eugippius founded a monastery on the site after 492.

Capri Island - Naples, Italy

Capri (Italian pronunciation: [ˈkapri], pronounced /kəˈpriː/ in English) is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy. It has been a resort since the time of the Roman Republic.

Castle Nuovo (New Castle) - Naples, Italy

The castle was built between 1279 and 1282 by order of Charles I of Anjou, from whom it gets its original name, the Maschio Angioino (the Angevin Keep). It was called the "new" castle after extensive renovations commissioned by Alfonso of Aragon, following his victory over the French. Its original appearance is only visible in the Chapel of Santa Barbara, with frescoes (almost entirely vanished) by Giotto and his student, Maso di Banco. The reconstruction extended and fortified the structure. The marble entrance arch of the castle is of interest: numerous artists participated in creating this celebratory declaration of the Aragonese victory. Within the castle are housed the Neapolitan Society of National History (founded in 1875), possessing roughly 170 thousand volumes, drawings, prints, and manuscripts; and also the Civic Museum, which guards a rich collection of art works originally in Neapolitan churches.

Piazza del Plebiscito - Naples, Italy

Piazza Plebiscito is the largest square in Naples.
This noble semicircular piazza (19th Century) is enclosed on one side by the royal palace, on the other by the neoclassical façade of the church of San Francesco di Paola, built on the model of the Pantheon in Rome and prolonged by a curving colonnade.
Two equestrian statues stand in front of the church: one, by Canova, depicts Ferdinand I of Bourbon, the other is of Charles III of Bourbon. The royal palace was built at the beginning of the 17th Century by the architect Domenico Fontana and has been remodelled several times. The façade retains more or less its original appearance.
Since the late 19th Century the niches on the façade have contained eight statues of the most famous Kings of Naples. A huge staircase with twin ramps and crowned by a coffered dome leads to the apartments and the sumptuously decorated royal chapel.
It was only after 1734 that royalty lived in the apartments. The richly ornamented rooms have retained their numerous work of art, tapestries, paintings, period furniture and fine porcelain.