Is Naples Safe at Night?

And in that vein, is the Naples train station safe at night?

Without milking this too much, yes. Naples is safe at night. With some caveats, of course.

The coast of Naples at night.

Naples is a late city. Things start late, they end late, and if there were ever a city that truly feels like it never sleeps, it's Naples. Kids will be playing soccer in some tiny piazza until two in the morning, people will be hanging out of their windows and smoking even later than that. That's if there isn't a parade, procession, celebration, or other event happening, in which case no one will sleep until dawn, when it starts all over again with an espresso and probably a cigarette. Naples has a heartbeat that simply never slows.

Part of this lateness is due to dinner time. I'll warn you now, if you're an early dinner-eater, you might not have such a good time in Naples.

Restaurants won't open their doors until 7:30 at the very earliest. And while you can eat there then, you won't see anyone else until 9:30, the normal dinnertime in Naples (and most of southern Italy).

This has the benefit of keeping Naples fairly safe late into the evening. After all, if you're starting dinner at 9:30, chances are you won't leave until midnight. This goes for families with children as well, so there's a sense that, if there are families still out, then the evening is pretty safe.

Another consideration is weather. In the summer, especially when the scirocco blows the hot and sandy wind from the Sahara, people will be outside until well past midnight—when it finally cools down enough to sleep.

This can have both a benefit and drawback. On one hand, there are more people milling about and hanging around. On the other, and this is purely anecdotal experience, there's a little more of a angry/annoyed feeling during some of those summer nights, like people are angry that it's so hot, that they can't sleep, so they're looking for violence. It's never erupted into anything that I've seen, but it's not uncommon (especially after a soccer game) for a little brawl to occur where everyone wants to let off some steam.

Are there any places to avoid at night?

Avoid is a pretty firm word, but "be super extra cautious around" might be a more apt description. In all my time visiting Naples, the only place that felt a little risky in the nights was around the main train station—Stazione Centrale or Stazione Garibaldi. When I say "nights", I mean two or three in the morning.

It's the only place I've seen cop cars fly through multiple times with nights on, or stop near with their lights on.

Likewise, to the east of the train station, sort of past the train station, some people consider it to be rough in the wee hours of the morning, but this area doesn't have much in the way of hotels (or sights to see), so it's unlikely you'll be over there late at night.

Like Rome and Florence, or any city in Italy, the train station is a pretty safe place to sleep around if you're un-housed as it's lit 24/7, there are external security cameras, and there are always a lot of people around. This means there are often people there picking fights which can easily deteriorate into violence. Again, it seems like apart from a few isolated incidences, most tourists have no issues staying around the train station.

Last Thoughts

One of our biggest tips is to trust your gut, and even then, it can be wrong. Sometimes Darcy and I have ended up in a bad situation and our guts did absolutely nothing to warn us about it. Other times, both of us got a really weird feeling when nothing happened.

Naples is a city where your gut can easily make you think "this is a super dangerous area" when, in fact, it's not. We once visited Naples with Darcy's mom and, while walking to the hotel, we had to go down a pretty dark street without much int he way of lighting, and then into an even darker alleyway to find the entrance to this staircase. To Darcy and I, this was classic Naples. To her mom, this was a classic scam. She was thinking the hotel didn't exist, that we fell for some elaborate online mugging scam, and she was sure we wouldn't headed towards any place that resembled the photos we saw online.

Of course, we found the hotel, exactly as the photos described. However, this was a valuable lesson in understanding that what can scream "dangerous area" in literally any other city on Earth is just another alleyway in Naples.