Naples wanted tourists. Now it has to work out how to remain a city for the people who live there
Published on 19 September 2026 at 02:27 GMT
By Valeria Russo
In some streets of Naples, the sound of suitcase wheels rattling over the old stone paving has become part of the city's soundtrack. You hear it early in the morning, as someone leaves an apartment rented for the weekend, and again in the afternoon, when the next guests arrive.
Then there are the lockboxes attached to doorways, groups waiting outside pizzerias, queues forming at places made famous on TikTok, and souvenir shops where, only a few years ago, you would have found something entirely different.
None of this is necessarily a bad thing. More importantly, it makes little sense to talk about tourism as though it were the enemy. For years, Naples wanted exactly what is happening today: it wanted to be seen.
Those of us who have lived here long enough remember when Naples was almost invariably portrayed abroad through the same familiar themes: the Camorra, rubbish and urban decay.
That image has changed dramatically
In 2025, Naples' Urban Tourism Observatory recorded more than 20 million overnight stays, compared with around 10.7 million in 2022 - an increase of almost 87% in just three years. Nor is tourism now confined to summer and holiday periods. During the first months of 2026, the city continued to attract large numbers of visitors even during what would traditionally have been considered the low season.
Naples is no longer a destination that needs to be explained or defended. It has become a destination people want to book.
For a city that spent decades fighting a reputation that was often unfair, it is difficult not to see this as a form of vindication.
Tourism creates jobs. It fills restaurants, hotels and small businesses. Foreign visitors have brought new attention to neighbourhoods that for years remained outside the most popular tourist routes, while helping a wider audience appreciate an artistic heritage that extends far beyond the familiar view of Mount Vesuvius.
But the question is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid: how much tourism can a city absorb before its everyday life begins to change?
In May 2026, Airbnb said that around 9,300 properties in Naples were listed on its platform. Some 62.8% were entire homes, with most of the remainder being private rooms.
Taken in isolation, that figure does not prove that short-term rentals are responsible for Naples' housing problems. Airbnb itself argues that entire homes listed on its platform represent only a limited proportion of the city's overall housing stock.
The reality is more complicated
This is not about deciding whether tourists are "good" and property owners who rent out their homes are "bad". It is about understanding what happens when, in certain parts of a city, it becomes more financially attractive to cater for someone staying for three days than for someone looking for a home in which to live for years.
In Naples' historic centre, you do not need a spreadsheet to see that something is changing.
The doorways change. Businesses change. Opening hours change. Some streets are increasingly filled with services designed almost exclusively for people who are passing through.
But a city is not simply what it offers those who arrive
It is also the bakery where someone buys bread every morning, the school where parents take their children, the neighbour they have known for 20 years, the shop downstairs, the elderly resident who still calls a crossroads by the name of a building that disappeared decades ago.
It is this less photogenic part of the city that may be the first to disappear.
The irony is that this everyday life is precisely what many visitors come to Naples hoping to find.
They want the "real" neighbourhood, the market, washing hanging between buildings, the tiny bar and even the fragments of conversation overheard in the street. Foreign visitors want to eat where Neapolitans eat and experience an "authentic" city.
But authenticity is not a stage set
It exists only for as long as there is a community living in those places when nobody is taking photographs. If a neighbourhood gradually loses its residents, local services and everyday relationships, its historic facades may remain perfectly intact while something far more difficult to restore disappears behind them.
This is hardly a uniquely Neapolitan problem. Venice and Barcelona have been wrestling with it for years. Across Europe, cities are trying to strike a balance between the right to benefit economically from tourism and the right of residents to continue living in the places they helped make desirable in the first place.
Naples still has a chance to have that conversation before it is too late.
In 2027, Naples will host the America's Cup. It will be the first time the trophy has been contested in Italy, and images of the Bay of Naples will be broadcast around the world.
An estimate reported by ANSA suggests that the event could generate around 800,000 tourist stays between May and July.
That is a huge opportunity. Pretending otherwise would make little sense. But it is also a test.
The question should not simply be how many visitors will come, how many hotel rooms they will fill or how much money they will spend. We should also be asking what will be left behind when the international television crews have packed up and gone home.
Better public transport? Reclaimed public spaces? Stable jobs? More liveable neighbourhoods? Better protection for the city's urban heritage?
If the answer is yes, tourism will have helped make Naples better for the people who live here too.
If not, we will simply have put on a magnificent show.
I do not miss the Naples that constantly had to defend itself against its own bad reputation. Nor would I want to return to a city largely overlooked by international travellers.
I like hearing different languages in the streets. I like the thought that someone might travel thousands of miles to see Caravaggio at Pio Monte della Misericordia, walk into Naples Cathedral or simply sit and look out across the bay.
The problem begins when we measure Naples' success only by counting how many people arrive.
We should also be asking how many people can afford to stay.
Because a sustainable city is not one that manages to attract the greatest possible number of visitors. It is one that can welcome them without slowly pushing out the very life they came looking for.
Naples has finally won the world's attention.
Now comes the harder part: making sure that, as the world comes to Naples, the city still belongs to the people who call it home.
Written by a human author, edited with AI assistance.
Further information:
* Urban Tourism Observatory / City of Naples, tourism figures cited in the article, including 2025 visitor trends:
* ANSA, reporting Airbnb data on short-term rental listings in Naples in May 2026. https://www.ansa.it/campania/notizie/2026/05/06/airbnb-il-boom-turistico-di-napoli-anche-grazie-alla-nostra-piattaforma_34bf7127-3c5b-45a2-9890-acace37291b7.html
* ANSA, reporting hospitality-sector estimates connected with the 2027 America's Cup in Naples.
