Cycling in Naples? It's possible!

When you come out of the Stazione Centrale of Naples, the thought of cycling is just about the last thing that comes to mind. Throughout the day, the road between the station building and the adjacent Piazza Garibaldi offers a hellish spectacle of tightly packed, advancing at a walking pace, loud honking and often bruised cars, buses, taxis and scooters.

A few years ago, a courageous entrepreneur tried to set up a rental bicycle business here for incoming tourists, but the experiment has since been discontinued due to lack of interest. Still, cycling in Naples is very good, if you know where.

Naples Bike Festival

Naples must cycle lane (suitable for bicycles). That was the message of the seventh Napoli Bike Festival, held from 4 to 6 May in the beautiful park of Capodimonte, located high above the city.

A thousand enthusiasts had gathered here with all kinds of bicycles for a pleasant day out, but also to point out to the municipality the need for sustainable mobility, as it is called in official terms these days.

Mayor Luigi De Magistris was also there: he believes in cycling and two years ago even sent a group of civil servants to the Netherlands to learn from the Dutch example.

It will be some time before Naples gets on the bike en masse, because the average Neapolitan would now prefer to go to the bedroom by car. But progress is being made.

Car-free boulevard

For example, the Via Caracciolo, the wide boulevard along the Gulf of Naples, has been made car-free. This is now the start of a cycle route, which then leads through a tunnel under the hill of Posillipo to Bagnoli, the district of the former steel industry that is slowly recovering from the misery.

From there you can follow the coastal road to Pozzuoli, the seaside resort with its beautiful Roman remains. If you still have a little strength in your legs, you can finally go up to the impressive spectacle of the Solfatara, a huge crater in which hot sulfur vapors rise from the bottom in dozens of places.

Cars do drive along these roads, but it is doable during the day, as long as you pay close attention to the road signs, which are not equally clear everywhere. I myself once accidentally drove into the wrong (one-way) tunnel and that was not pleasant.

Bike Tour Napoli

For a first acquaintance with Naples by bike, it is therefore recommended to take a tour with a guide. This is possible via Bike Tour Napoli, founded by the organizers of the Napoli Bike Festival. The company is located in the Bicycle House in the central Galleria Principe di Napoli, which is also used as a Bike Bar in the evenings.

You can choose from three different routes here: the Unesco tour of 10 to 12 kilometers leads through the old historic center (until World Heritage declared by UNESCO) and takes about 3 hours, because of course there are often stops. A 20-kilometer ride ascends the 150-meter-high hill of Posillipo, west of the town, from where you have spectacular views of the bay and Mount Vesuvius.

A third tour goes even further west, to the antiquity-studded volcanic area of ​​the Campi Flegrei. The distance here is about 40 km, with lunch at the beautiful Lago d'Averna, where according to the ancient Greeks was the entrance to the Underworld.

Last year the Biketournapoli guides showed around a thousand visitors. The largest group of them, at 35% – unsurprisingly – was the Dutch.

More detailed information can be found at www.biketournapoli.com.