Where Spaccanapoli starts and ends

Why everyone asks this question

Because people look for a sign and don’t find one. Spaccanapoli is a nickname, born from the view from above, and street signs show the official names of the individual stretches. So it happens that someone asks me for directions to Spaccanapoli while they’re already walking on it. I’ve explained why it’s called that in why it’s called Spaccanapoli.

The names in sequence, from west to east

Going from the via Toledo side towards Forcella, the street is called, in order: via Pasquale Scura, via Benedetto Croce, via San Biagio dei Librai, via Vicaria Vecchia, via Forcella, via Giudecca Vecchia, via Ottavio Tupputi. Seven names for a single line. The two you hear most often are Benedetto Croce and San Biagio dei Librai, which together make up almost the entire monumental stretch: if someone tells you to meet «at San Biagio dei Librai», they’re giving you a meeting point on Spaccanapoli.

The west end

To the west, the line peters out around via Pasquale Scura, near Montesanto, in an area without monuments where no one stops to take photos. That’s why almost everyone considers the practical starting point to be Piazza del Gesù Nuovo: it’s the square with the piperno façade and the spire, a few minutes from via Toledo or down from Port’Alba from Dante metro station, and it’s the meeting point for almost all guided tours of the historic centre.

The east end

To the east, past via Duomo, the decumanus continues with via Vicaria Vecchia, via Forcella, via Giudecca Vecchia, and via Ottavio Tupputi. The character changes: fewer open churches, fewer shop windows, more of a neighbourhood that lives on its own. There’s nothing wrong with going there, but if you only have an hour, that’s not where you’ll spend it. I’ve written about this, and about moving around in the evening, in Is Spaccanapoli safe.

Where it really makes sense to start

How to tell you’re there

You don’t need a sign. If you’re on a straight, narrow street with dark basalt paving, high walls, and a strip of sky above your head as wide as the road, you’re on the lower decumanus. If the street is uphill, it’s not Spaccanapoli: San Gregorio Armeno crosses it, and the alleys rise towards the Quartieri Spagnoli, which are something else entirely, on the other side of via Toledo.

Where it stands in relation to the other two decumani

The parallel streets are three and help you get your bearings better than any sign. The lower decumanus is Spaccanapoli. The main decumanus is via dei Tribunali, which runs a little further uphill and is reached by side streets; the upper decumanus is in the area of via dell’Anticaglia, even further up. If you take an uphill side street from the lower decumanus and walk for a couple of minutes, you’ll come out on via dei Tribunali: the best-known of these side streets is via San Gregorio Armeno. Knowing this solves half the doubts, because the question «am I still on Spaccanapoli?» almost always comes from having taken a perpendicular street without realising it.

If you arrive by train

From Napoli Centrale, the convenient end is the east one. With Line 1, you get off at Duomo or Università and in a few minutes you’re on the decumanus; on foot, it’s about twenty minutes along corso Umberto I until you reach via Duomo. In that case, it makes sense to reverse the direction of the walk: you start from via Duomo and walk towards Piazza del Gesù Nuovo, seeing the same things in reverse order. The stops and routes are in how to get there.

How long does it take to walk the whole thing?

At a slow pace, without going inside anywhere, the monumental stretch takes about half an hour. The full two kilometres, end to end, is a little more than double that. With entry fees, the situation changes completely: the numbers are in how long it is and in how much time you need. Keep in mind that on this street, time isn’t consumed by distance: it’s consumed by stops, queues at entrances, and people standing in the middle of the road taking photos of the same thing you want to photograph.

Frequently asked questions