On 3 October 1839 Italy's first train left Naples and arrived here: the Naples-Portici line opened the country's railway age, and the national museum of Pietrarsa — in the Bourbon workshops at the town's edge — tells the story with vintage locomotives facing the sea. The reason for the track was the palace: the residence Charles of Bourbon built in 1738 on Vesuvius's lower slopes, today a university seat with its botanical garden.
Portici is among Europe's densest towns, alive and unvarnished: the Granatello, its little Bourbon harbour, serves fry shops and sunsets over the gulf.
Near Portici
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
