The 10 best towns with a serious restaurant that you can reach by train in Campania
Ten towns: what each is best for, what a home costs, and the catch. A square meter runs from €650 in Vairano Patenora to €6,900 in Sorrento.
From the 1,000 towns picked by Peter Benei.
92 towns written about, 908 to go. Follow along, free: Subscribe on Substack
Campania is a region of volcanic soil, and you taste it: tomatoes grown on the black slopes below Vesuvius, wine from Irpinia's high inland hills where the harvest comes late and the nights turn cold, mozzarella made each morning from water buffalo that graze the flats behind the coast. The cooking runs from the fried street food of the bay to long tasting menus built on ancient grain and mountain lamb. Houses are tufo, the soft yellow volcanic stone that cuts like cheese and darkens with rain, and church domes are tiled in green and yellow majolica. Spring and late autumn are the seasons to eat here, when the artichokes and then the chestnuts arrive and the coast road empties out.
Almost everyone eating their way through Campania does it from Naples, and with good reason, since the city holds the pizzerias people fly in for and the Circumvesuviana runs out of it in both directions. The historic center is full from morning, the queues outside the famous pizza counters run down the street, and tables at the rated kitchens go weeks in advance. It is a magnificent place to be hungry in. It is also the single most concentrated stretch of food tourism in southern Italy.
The same volcanic soil, the same buffalo herds and the same rail lines carry on well past the city limits. Inland toward Avellino, out along the Cilento coast, around the crater lakes west of the bay and down the Sorrentine peninsula, there are dining rooms the guides rate as highly and towns where a booking is still possible on the day. All of these can be reached by train or by the regional lines that connect to it, which means lunch can involve a proper bottle.
Of the 67 communes we have mapped in Campania, 11 qualify as towns with a serious restaurant you can reach by train: each holds a restaurant listed by the most demanding of the guides, and we have confirmed each is reachable without a car. This list is 10 of them. The smallest, Pisciotta, has 2,410 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best towns with a serious restaurant that eat well within 90 minutes of Naples and The 9 best towns with a serious restaurant in the province of Napoli.
1. Pisciotta
Best for walks in a national park. Part of the comune lies in a national park.
2 h 5 min from Salerno · homes €1,250 to €1,750 a m² in the center · 2,410 people
Why visit Pisciotta
The hill the town occupies rises between Ascea and Palinuro, part of the strictest zone of the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park, and the ridge gives the stone houses of the centro storico a clear line of sight to Capo Palinuro twelve kilometers south. The town's parts sit at different elevations doing different work: the historic core holds the ridge at 171 meters, the olive terraces cover the slopes below it, and Marina di Pisciotta occupies the shore at the foot of the hill, where the fishing boats go out.
The menaica net worked by the Marina's fishermen is a technique once widespread around the Mediterranean and now reduced to a few coves, of which this is one. Carlo Pisacane's failed 1857 revolutionary expedition landed at Sapri and was crushed nearby; the Cilento coast keeps the memory in plaques and processions rather than in any structure at Pisciotta itself.
What holds the town together is elevation: everything of note here, the anchovies, the olives, the beach, the ridge, is defined by how far it sits above or below that 171-meter line.
The catch: The nearest airport, Naples, is 3 h 2 min away by road.
What to see in Pisciotta
- Centro storico di Pisciotta. Hilltop medieval core of stone houses on a ridge 171 meters above the sea, with a clear sightline to Capo Palinuro.
- Marina di Pisciotta. Fishing port at the foot of the hill, departure point for the last menaica anchovy boats on the coast, its beach holding the Blue Flag.
- Uliveti di Pisciottana. Terraces holding trees of considerable age, the source groves of the Cilento DOP extra-virgin oil.
How to get to Pisciotta
It has its own railway station. Salerno is about 2 h 5 min away by road.
Our tip
May through September is the open season on the Cilento coast: clear water, warm evenings and the menaica boats out at night. July and August push past thirty-five degrees and the Marina rentals book; the centro storico on the hill above stays a few degrees cooler in the breeze. April and October are dry and mild, the right time for the olive harvest road and Parco Nazionale walks without heat.
2. Vairano Patenora
59 min from Naples · homes €650 to €850 a m² in the center · 6,368 people
Why visit Vairano Patenora
The castle is a shell and that is the point of coming. Innico II d'Avalos built it between 1491 and 1503 on the footings of the Norman one, four round towers with the largest at the south-east corner, and the inside has fallen in: you can still read the floor levels off the walls, the kitchens, the prisons, the old cistern.
Below it the medieval borgo runs downhill in gray stone, and its wall once carried fourteen cylindrical towers and three gates. People have been passing through here for a very long time.
The Samnites held the hills, the Romans took them in 290 BC, the Normans put up the first castle, and Frederick II, Charles II of Anjou and Pope Gregory X all stayed in it. Two miles out, the Abbazia della Ferrara was built by a Cistercian monk between 1171 and 1179 and keeps a thirteenth-century fresco of a funeral.
The town below sits in flat, farmed country between the Matese and the Roccamonfina park, with a small volcanic lake on the Presenzano boundary.
What to see in Vairano Patenora
- Castello aragonese. Built 1491 to 1503 by Innico II d'Avalos on the Norman and Swabian footings. Four round towers; the interior is ruined, but the floor divisions, kitchens, prisons and cistern are still legible.
- The borgo walls. The medieval circuit once ran to fourteen cylindrical towers on battered bases, opened by three gates: porta Oliva, porta di Mezzo and porta Castello.
- Abbazia della Ferrara. A Cistercian abbey of 1171 to 1179 that housed Frederick II and the future Pope Celestine V, holding a thirteenth-century fresco of the funeral of Malgerio Sorel.
How to get to Vairano Patenora
It has its own railway station. Naples is about 59 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
April to October is the season down here at 168 meters, and July and August are hot in the valley in a way the hill towns further east are not. Spring is the best of it, when the scrub on Catreola and Montauro is green and the castle can be walked around without the heat. The feast of San Bartolomeo falls on 24 August.
3. Vietri sul Mare
Best for a walk through the old town. It is on the list of Italy's most beautiful villages.
16 min from Salerno · homes €2,600 to €3,700 a m² in the center · 6,962 people
Why visit Vietri sul Mare
Vietri sul Mare sits at 80 meters at the eastern end of the Costiera Amalfitana, the most populous commune of the UNESCO-listed coastline, separated from the port of Salerno by a single harbor wall. The polychrome ceramics tradition is documented from the ninth century, with a generally agreed start around the fifteenth, and the industrial scale-up came in the 1920s and 1930s when a small group of German émigré artists settled in the workshops and brought the bestiary-and-floral pottery the town still produces.
The Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista, rebuilt in the seventeenth century, has a green-and-yellow majolica dome that has become the town's signature image. Vietri's frazione of Albori is one of the Borghi più belli d'Italia inside the UNESCO coastline, and the town is a member of the Città della Ceramica network.
The marina at Marina di Vietri and the cliffside frazione of Raito and Albori sit below and above the centro on the same slope.
What to see in Vietri sul Mare
- Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista. Seventeenth-century parish church with a green-and-yellow majolica dome and a bell tower crowned by a tiled cupola, the most photographed image of the town.
- Museo Provinciale della Ceramica. Ceramic museum in Villa Guariglia at Raito, with Vietri pieces from the seventeenth century through the German-period 1920s and after.
- Albori. Cliffside frazione above the centro, also a Borgo più bello d'Italia, with stone houses, lanes, and views over the Gulf of Salerno.
How to get to Vietri sul Mare
It has its own railway station. Salerno is about 16 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
May, June, September and early October are the strongest months. The water along the Marina di Vietri climbs past twenty degrees, the SS163 west to Cetara and Maiori runs without the gridlock of high summer, and the ceramic workshops keep their full hours. July and August are full: day-trippers arrive from Salerno on the local train and the Marina parking fills before mid-morning.
4. Sorrento
Best for Limone di Sorrento IGP. The town gives its name to Limone di Sorrento IGP.
57 min from Naples · homes €4,200 to €6,900 a m² in the center · 15,152 people
Why visit Sorrento
Sorrento sits on a block of tuff cliff fifty meters above the Bay of Napoli, thirty kilometers from the city by Circumvesuviana railway or ferry. The town began as a Greek foundation and became the Roman Surrentum, a resort favored by senators.
The current population is 15,152. The old town sits above, gathered around the Duomo and the cloister of San Francesco a few minutes apart, while Marina Grande lies below the cliff, reached through the ancient Greek gate, its harbor still working and its trattorie facing the bay.
Terraces of lemon groves ring the slopes above town, the same femminello sorrentino IGP fruit that supplies the limoncello sold through the centro storico. Piazza Tasso, at the head of the old town, is where Corso Italia begins and where the statue of Torquato Tasso stands; the poet was baptized in the cathedral below.
A cliff town facing the bay, its upper streets given to churches and squares, its lower shore to fishing and the harbor, and its surrounding slopes turned over entirely to the lemon that still funds much of what happens in between.
The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €6,900 a m².
What to see in Sorrento
- Duomo di Sorrento. Eleventh-century cathedral, rebuilt in 1573 after the Ottoman raid, with a Baroque interior, a 1924 neo-Gothic façade and the baptistery where Torquato Tasso was christened.
- Chiostro di San Francesco. Fourteenth-century cloister of tuff arches and crossed columns, the marble façade redone in 1926, still used for civic weddings and chamber concerts.
- Museo Correale di Terranova. Decorative arts museum in a seventeenth-century villa opened in 1924, with Neapolitan porcelain, period furniture and seventeenth-century painting.
How to get to Sorrento
It has its own railway station. Naples is about 57 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
May, June, September and October are the months that work for Sorrento. The sea is warm enough to swim, the temperatures sit in the mid-twenties, and the centro storico is busy without being unworkable. July and August are crowded almost beyond use.
5. Vico Equense
Best for a swim. The comune's beach holds a Blue Flag.
55 min from Naples · homes €3,000 to €5,800 a m² in the center · 20,198 people
Why visit Vico Equense
Vico Equense sits on a block of tuff and limestone above the Bay of Napoli, twenty-five kilometers from the city and the first town on the Sorrento peninsula coming from the north. A seventh-century BC pre-Roman necropolis predates the Latin Aequana that Roman patricians built here for their villas, and the finds from that older settlement, funerary objects excavated in the 1960s and 1970s, sit now in a museum founded in 1966.
The medieval town that survives was walled in the Angevin era, when a fortress built between 1284 and 1289, by tradition for Charles II, rose on the cliff as both stronghold and residence, and the diocese's cathedral followed on a neighboring clifftop early in the next century, before losing its status as a see in 1818. Behind the town, the limestone mass of the Lattari range closes off the land side, reached since 1952 by cable car from the coast at Castellammare.
Pizza by the meter, the town's best-known export, was invented here by Luigi Dell'Amura, called Gigino, in the 1930s, and his restaurant in the centro still serves it. What holds the town together is the sequence itself: a pre-Roman settlement, a Roman villa town, an Angevin fortress and a bishopric, and finally a twentieth-century dish, each layer built on a narrow shelf of rock between the mountain and the bay.
The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €5,800 a m².
What to see in Vico Equense
- Chiesa dell'Annunziata. The church stands at the edge of the cliff, its Gothic interior at odds with the Baroque face it was given later. The old cathedral of a diocese that no longer has a seat here.
- Castello Giusso. Angevin castle built between 1284 and 1289, by tradition for Charles II of Anjou, with a Renaissance residential wing and gardens above the bay.
- Antiquarium Silio Italico. Archaeological museum founded in 1966, with funerary objects from a seventh-century BC pre-Roman necropolis excavated in the 1960s and 1970s.
How to get to Vico Equense
It has its own railway station. Naples is about 55 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
May through September is the working season for Vico Equense. June and September are the best months: warm sea, fewer day-trippers than July and August, and the cooler air of Monte Faito above the coast. July and August are crowded and hot at sea level, though the Faito plateau stays cooler at around twenty-two degrees.
6. Capaccio Paestum
Best for a World Heritage site. UNESCO lists a site in the comune.
51 min from Salerno · homes €840 to €1,200 a m² in the center · 22,410 people
Why visit Capaccio Paestum
Capaccio Paestum is the only commune in Italy where the name pairs a medieval hilltown with an ancient city on the plain below. The seat of Capaccio sits at 419 meters on Monte Calpazio, while the archaeological park below, the city of Poseidonia founded around 600 BC, occupies the flat between the Sele river and the sea.
The two halves of the name mark two different settlements built centuries apart and never merged into one another. The layering below Monte Calpazio runs deeper than the founding city and the medieval hilltown: a Roman city followed the earlier one on the same plain, and the medieval Capaccio Vecchia, razed by Frederick II, was rebuilt as the hilltown that still carries the seat today.
The buffalo pastures that made the area's DOP mozzarella sit inside the same national park boundary as the Sele plain and the Monte Calpazio spur, so the cheese-making land and the ruins share one stretch of ground. The commune, in effect, is stacked: hill above, plain below, and each layer on the plain built over or beside the one before it.
What to see in Capaccio Paestum
- Templi di Paestum. The Basilica, the Temple of Hera II and the Temple of Athena stand on the flat ground between the Sele river and the sea, close enough to walk between in an afternoon.
- Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Paestum. The frescoes are kept indoors, apart from the temples they were painted near, giving a rare look at how the tomb's painters depicted the afterlife.
- Mura greche di Paestum. Almost five kilometers of Greek and Roman defensive walls with four gates, intact across the entire perimeter of the ancient city.
How to get to Capaccio Paestum
It has its own railway station. Salerno is about 51 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
May, June and September are the right months on the Sele plain, with the temples at sunrise or late afternoon and the buffalo pastures still green. July and August push the plain past thirty-eight degrees, the archaeological park closes its high noon hours and the beach absorbs most visitors. April and October are dry and quiet, the Madonna del Granato feast falls on the first Sunday of May and the temples are walkable without queues.
7. Pompei
Best for walks in a national park. Part of the comune lies in a national park.
24 min from Naples · homes €2,150 to €3,300 a m² in the center · 23,647 people
Why visit Pompei
Pompei sits at 30 meters on a volcanic plateau on the south slope of Vesuvius, twenty kilometers from Naples and a few kilometers inland from where the Sarno meets the sea. The Roman city was buried under five to six meters of ash and lapilli when the volcano erupted on 24 October 79 AD, killing the part of the population that had not already left.
Excavations began in 1748 under the Bourbons and have never stopped; the site has been UNESCO-listed since 1997 alongside Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata, and is the third most visited archaeological site in the world. Modern Pompei was founded in 1881 by the lawyer Bartolo Longo, who built the Santuario della Beata Vergine del Rosario as a center for pilgrimage and social work.
The basilica with its 80-meter campanile and the surrounding grid of streets are entirely a creation of the 1880s, separate from the dig and laid over fields that had been farmland until then.
What to see in Pompei
- Parco Archeologico di Pompei. The Roman city buried in 79 AD and excavated since 1748, UNESCO-listed since 1997, with the Forum, the Villa dei Misteri and the Lupanare.
- Santuario della Beata Vergine del Rosario. Pontifical basilica built between 1876 and 1891 by the lawyer Bartolo Longo, the heart of modern Pompei and a pilgrimage site of four million a year.
- Casa del Fauno. Roman patrician house in the dig with a bronze faun at its center and the Alexander Mosaic floor depicting Issus, now in the Naples museum.
How to get to Pompei
It has its own railway station. Naples is about 24 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
May, June, September and early October are the strongest months for Pompei. The dig opens at nine and the Forum stays walkable before midday heat sets in. July and August are punishing: the site sits on volcanic plateau at thirty meters with no shade in the main streets, and afternoon temperatures cross thirty-five degrees.
8. Bacoli
Best for a soak. The comune has thermal baths.
31 min from Naples · homes €1,800 to €2,750 a m² in the center · 24,988 people
Why visit Bacoli
Bacoli sits at thirty meters on the western lobe of the Campi Flegrei, looking onto Lake Miseno and its headland across the Bay of Pozzuoli. The Romans called it Bauli.
In the late Republic and early Empire it was a resort lined with the villas of senators and emperors, and the fleet base nearby, the Classis Misenensis, was the largest in the Mediterranean. Most of that infrastructure is still here, scattered through the residential blocks that now fill the town, so that a cistern or a cistern complex turns up between apartment buildings rather than in an isolated park.
The town's two promontories divide its Roman past between them: the harbor side toward Miseno, where the fleet and its water supply were based, and the Baia side, where the villas and the later Aragonese castle stand. Bacoli is also an active geothermal zone, and bradyseism, the slow rise and fall of the Campi Flegrei coastline, is still measurable here, the same force that put the Roman villas at Baia underwater.
What survives above ground and what has sunk below the sea are the same story of ground that will not stay still.
What to see in Bacoli
- Piscina Mirabilis. Forty-eight cross-shaped pillars hold up the roof in rows, the scale meant to be walked through rather than read about, still standing among the residential blocks that have grown up around it.
- Cento Camerelle. Second cistern complex four hundred meters from the Piscina Mirabilis, on two superimposed levels, locally called the Prisons of Nero.
- Castello Aragonese di Baia. Late-fifteenth-century Aragonese fortress on the Baia promontory, since 1993 the seat of the Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei.
How to get to Bacoli
It has its own railway station. Naples is about 31 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
May through September is the season for Bacoli. The Bay of Pozzuoli warms by late spring, and the underwater archaeological park at Baia runs glass-bottom and snorkel tours through the summer. July and August are hot and crowded, with day-trippers from Napoli and Ischia ferries crossing constantly; the open ruins like the Piscina Mirabilis are worth visiting early in the day.
9. Nola
Best for a day out from Naples. It is 28 min by car.
28 min from Naples · homes €1,350 to €2,050 a m² in the center · 34,111 people
Why visit Nola
Nola sits at 34 meters on the plain between Vesuvius and the Apennines, twenty kilometers east of Napoli. It was an Oscan and Samnite town before Rome, and the place where Augustus died in AD 14, in the same house his father had died in.
Giordano Bruno was born here in 1548, the Nolano who called his philosophy nolana before he was burned at the Campo de' Fiori in 1600. The town is best known today for the Festa dei Gigli, a UNESCO Intangible Heritage celebration on the Sunday after June 22 in which eight twenty-five-meter wooden obelisks, each weighing over two tonnes, are carried through the streets by teams of about 128 bearers.
The festival honors Paolino di Nola, the fifth-century bishop whose return from captivity, as the legend tells it, the townspeople greeted with lilies. Outside the festival, Nola is a working town of warehouses and commerce.
What to see in Nola
- Cattedrale di Nola. Cathedral of the Assunta and San Paolino, rebuilt between 1869 and 1909 after the fire of 1861, with relics of the patron bishop.
- Festa dei Gigli. UNESCO Intangible Heritage festival in June: eight 25-meter wooden obelisks carried through the streets by teams of about 128 bearers.
- Anfiteatro Romano di Nola. Roman amphitheater of the first century BC, 138 by 108 meters, about a third of it excavated, open to visitors by booking.
How to get to Nola
It has its own railway station. Naples is about 28 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
April through June covers the green months and culminates in the Festa dei Gigli on the Sunday after June 22, the one weekend when Nola fills with hundreds of thousands of visitors. September and October are warm and quieter, with the wine and hazelnut harvests in nearby Irpinia bringing activity to the markets. July and August are hot and humid on the plain.
10. Caserta
Best for a World Heritage site. UNESCO lists a site in the comune.
38 min from Naples · homes €1,000 to €1,700 a m² in the center · 72,793 people
Why visit Caserta
Caserta sits at 68 meters on the Campanian plain, 25 kilometers north of Naples at the foot of the Tifatini hills. The city exists because Charles III of Bourbon decided in 1750 to build a palace that would rival Versailles and the Royal Palace of Madrid, far enough inland to be safe from naval bombardment.
King Charles of Bourbon laid the first stone of Luigi Vanvitelli's palace in 1752: five floors, 1,200 rooms, 1,742 windows, 34 staircases. The gardens stretch three kilometers from the back façade to a cascade fed by the Carolino Aqueduct, also Vanvitelli's design.
The complex was listed by UNESCO in 1997 together with the silk village of San Leucio, the utopian industrial colony Ferdinand IV built on a hill four kilometers away. Up the road, Casertavecchia, the medieval village abandoned when the Bourbons moved everyone down to the plain, keeps its 12th-century Romanesque cathedral at 401 meters.
The modern city below is a working provincial capital, not a tourist town.
What to see in Caserta
- Reggia di Caserta. Bourbon royal palace begun in 1752 by Luigi Vanvitelli, five floors, 1,200 rooms, UNESCO-listed since 1997 with the park and the Carolino Aqueduct.
- Parco Reale e Giardino Inglese. Three-kilometer formal park ending in a cascade, with an English Garden added by Maria Carolina in 1786, the first of its kind in Italy.
- Casertavecchia. Medieval hilltop village at 401 meters, 10 km from the city, abandoned when the Bourbons relocated the population to the plain.
How to get to Caserta
It has its own railway station. Naples is about 38 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the comfortable months on the plain. The Reggia gardens are at their best in May, when the parterres bloom and the cascade runs full. July and August push into the high thirties; Vanvitelli's three-kilometer walk from palace to cascade becomes a heat exposure rather than a pleasure, though the shuttle bus runs.
If you only pick one
Which town is yours
One town for each kind of trip, and the reason in a line.
Without a car
Caserta
The train stops in the commune, so you can arrive and leave without a car.
For everyday life on foot
Sorrento
Seven of the ten everyday services we look for, from a grocer to a pharmacy, are on the map within 500 meters of the center.
For a short trip
Vietri sul Mare
16 min by car from Salerno, the shortest drive from a city on this list.
For a small town
Pisciotta
2,410 people, the smallest town on this list.
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