My name is Marco DeLuca, and I'm a food writer and freelance journalist originally from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Two years ago I moved to Naples. The short version of why: my grandmother was from here, I'd been visiting since I was twenty, and eventually it stopped making sense to keep leaving.
The longer version involves a Neapolitan grandmother who cooked with the intensity of someone settling a personal score with hunger. She grew up in Quartieri Spagnoli, emigrated to Brooklyn in the 1960s, and spent the next fifty years recreating the food she'd left behind — with varying degrees of accuracy, I've since discovered. Her sfogliatella recipe was wrong. Her ragù was perfect. I'm still working out the discrepancies.
I started visiting Naples at twenty, first tagging along with her on a trip back, then on my own. Ten trips over a decade, each one longer than the last. I ate my way through the centro storico. I got lost in Quartieri Spagnoli looking for the building she was born in. I took the Circumvesuviana to Pompeii in August and regretted every life choice that led me to a train without air conditioning. By trip eight or nine, I stopped pretending I was visiting and started admitting I was looking for a reason to stay.
Most of what's written about Naples online falls into two categories: tourist guides that treat the city like a checklist ("Top 10 Things to Do") and fear-mongering articles that make it sound like you'll be robbed before you clear the airport. Both miss the point spectacularly.
I wanted to write about Naples the way I experience it — through food, mostly, but also through the neighbourhoods, the daily rhythms, the frustrations, and the things that make me stay even when the bureaucracy is insane and the scooters are trying to kill me. This is a city that rewards patience and curiosity and a willingness to eat things you can't identify. I write for people who want that kind of trip.
I love Naples with the particular intensity of someone who chose it rather than being born into it. But love doesn't mean I ignore what's difficult here. The traffic is genuinely dangerous. The bureaucracy will age you. Some streets smell terrible in summer. The Circumvesuviana is an endurance test. I write about all of it because pretending this city is only beautiful would be doing it a disservice — the mess is part of what makes it alive.
This site contains occasional links to services I use. I'm not sponsored by any tourism board, hotel, or airline. My recommendations are based on personal experience, and when I say something is overpriced or not worth it, I mean it.
If you're planning a trip and have questions, I'm always happy to talk Naples.
— Marco