Naples is Italy's fourth largest city in terms of economic size, coming after Milan and Rome and Turin. It is the world's 105th richest city by purchasing power, with a GDP of $69 billion. [1] The economy of Naples and its surrounding area is based largely on tourism, commerce, industry and agriculture. Naples also acts as a busy cargo terminal and the port of Naples is one of the Mediterranean's biggest and most important. The city has had remarkable economic growth since World War II, and unemployment in the wider region has fallen dramatically since 1999. [2] Naples was once a busy industrial city though many factories have shut down in the last decades.
Naples was once an important electronics industrial hub, however, many facilities such as the Olivetti research department in Pozzuoli have left the city. A modest light aircraft industry remains in Naples; Partenavia and Vulcanair (both firms now belong to Vulcanair) are present in the city and Naples once encompassed several departments of Aeritalia. Upon the merger of Aeritalia with Selenia (a group of electronic and radar defense military industries), the company Alenia was formed and maintained a presence in Naples, albeit smaller than its Aeritalia heyday.
Ship construction yards are present in Naples city-proper, Pozzuoli, Castellammare di Stabia (motor yachts, fishing boats and fishing ships) as well as Castellammare di Stabia which is the site of a large shipyard, Cantieri Navali, owned by Fincantieri.
Naples and its surroundings have a large number of small firms manufacturing canned vegetables, mostly tomato sauce. Family-sized pasta companies in Torre Annunziata collapsed around 1949-1950 due to the rise of industrial pasta makers in northern Italy. Only the traditional slow food, artisan-made pasta in Gragnano survived and remains one of the most famous traditional products of Naples. Fior di latte cheese is also made in the territories of Agerola, Lettere and Gragnano.
The wine industry is also prevalent in the Naples area, mainly in Gragnano, Lettere, Ercolano and Pozzuoli. Naples is known worldwide for Neapolitan coffee, made with the historical Neapolitan flip coffee pot which then led to the creation of the espresso coffee machine and Moka Express coffee pot. Some light industrial companies remain who roast coffee beans and produce ground coffee to be used with Neapolitan coffee machines.
Tourism is one of the biggest sectors of the Neapolitan economy, with the hotel trade sector compromising 3.7% of Naples' GDP. Naples has always been and remains one of Italy's and Europe's top tourist city destinations, with the first tourists coming in the 18th century during the Grand Tour. In terms of international arrivals, Naples came 166th in the world in 2008, with only 381,000 visitors (a -1.6% decrease from the previous year), coming after Lille, but overtaking York, Stuttgart, Belgrade and Dallas. [3] Despite this, however, many domestic tourists from within Italy visit the city, raising the total tourist arrivals to several millions every year. Naples is popular due to its scenery, history, culture, monuments and cityscape. Popular attractions include the Piazza del Plebiscito, the Teatro San Carlo, Naples Cathedral, and the city's several other monuments, churches, buildings, piazzas and streets in general. Many tourists who come to Naples also visit attractions outside of the city, including the nearby Vesuvius, the classical ruins of Pompeii (with 2,571,725 visitors in 2007) [4] as well as the scenic Amalfi Coast, which includes the towns Sorrento, Amalfi and Ravello, the islands of Capri, Ischia and Procida, and the Baroque Royal Palace of Caserta.
Measuring the economy on a provincial level, the province of Naples is placed 94th out of the total of 103 provinces in Italy in terms of gross value added. [5] These statistics, however, do not include the economic activity generated by the black market or untaxed wages. It is not uncommon for Neapolitan workers to move North given unemployment was around 28% in 2005. [6] However, the unemployment level in Campania as a whole has been decreasing in recent times; in 2010 it was only 11.2%. [2] The business centre of Naples is the Centro Direzionale . This centre has only come to prominence recently and is the first area of the city to feature skyscrapers, some of which were designed by Kenzo Tange. This project was an attempt to centralise and improve the business and economic efficiency of Naples while also providing jobs with its hotels and shops.
Akin to most developed countries and regions of the world, there has been a move away from a traditional agriculture-based economy in the wider province to one based on service industries. [5] In early 2002 there were over 249,590 enterprises operating in the province of Naples according to registrations in the Chamber of Commerce Public Register. [5] More than half of these are small enterprises with fewer than 20 workers; 70 companies are medium-sized with more than 200 workers; and 15 have more than 500 workers. [5] Employment in the province of Naples in different sectors breaks down as follows: [5]
Public services | Manufacturing | Commerce | Construction | Transportation | Financial services | Agriculture | Hotel trade | Other activities | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Percentage | 30.7% | 18% | 14% | 9.5% | 8.2% | 7.4% | 5.1% | 3.7% | 3.4% |
Campania is an administrative region of Italy; most of it is in the south-western portion of the Italian peninsula, but it also includes the small Phlegraean Islands and the island of Capri. The capital of the Campania region is Naples. As of 2018, the region had a population of around 5,820,000 people, making it Italy's third most populous region, and, with an area of 13,590 km2 (5,247 sq mi), its most densely populated region. Based on its GDP, Campania is also the most economically productive region in southern Italy and the 7th most productive in the whole country. Naples' urban area, which is in Campania, is the eighth most populous in the European Union. The region is home to 10 of the 58 UNESCO sites in Italy, including Pompeii and Herculaneum, the Royal Palace of Caserta, the Amalfi Coast and the Historic Centre of Naples. In addition, Campania's Mount Vesuvius is part of the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves.
Naples is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's administrative limits as of 2022. Its province-level municipality is the third-most populous metropolitan city in Italy with a population of 3,115,320 residents, and its metropolitan area stretches beyond the boundaries of the city wall for approximately 30 kilometres.
Pompei or Pompeii is a city and commune in the Metropolitan City of Naples, Italy, home of the ancient Roman ruins of Pompeii that are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Sorrento is a town overlooking the Bay of Naples in Southern Italy. A popular tourist destination, Sorrento is located on the Sorrentine Peninsula at the south-eastern terminus of the Circumvesuviana rail line, within easy access from Naples and Pompei. The town is widely known for its small ceramics, lacework and marquetry (woodwork) shops.
Castellammare di Stabia is a comune in the Metropolitan City of Naples, Campania region, in southern Italy. It is situated on the Bay of Naples about 30 km (19 mi) southeast of Naples, on the route to Sorrento.
Torre Annunziata is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Naples, in the Italian region of Campania. It is located on the Gulf of Naples, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius.
Giugliano in Campania, also known simply as Giugliano, is a city and comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Naples, Campania, Italy. A suburb of Naples, as of 2017, it had some 124,000 inhabitants, making it the most populated Italian city that is not a provincial capital.
Gragnano, a hill town located between a mountain crest and the Amalfi Coast, is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Naples in southern Italy's Campania region, located about 30 kilometres southeast of Naples city.
Lettere is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Naples in the southern central Italian region Campania, located about 30 km southeast of Naples.
Piano di Sorrento is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Naples in the Italian region Campania, located about 25 km (16 mi) southeast of Naples. Piano di Sorrento borders the following municipalities: Meta, Sant'Agnello, Vico Equense.
Pimonte is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Naples in the Italian region Campania, located about 30 km southeast of Naples.
The Agerolese is a breed of dairy cattle from the area of Agerola, in Campania in southern Italy. It is particularly associated with the Sorrento Peninsula and Monti Lattari. It derives from cross-breeding of indigenous Podolica cattle with Italian Holstein-Friesian, Bruna Italiana and Jersey cattle. It is one of the sixteen minor Italian cattle breeds of limited diffusion recognised and protected by the Ministero delle Politiche Agricole Alimentari e Forestali, the Italian ministry of agriculture.
Neapolitan cuisine has ancient historical roots that date back to the Greco-Roman period, which was enriched over the centuries by the influence of the different cultures that controlled Naples and its kingdoms, such as that of Aragon and France.
The Italian Catholic diocese of Castellammare di Stabia, on the Bay of Naples, existed until 1986. In that year it became part of the archdiocese of Sorrento-Castellammare di Stabia.
Stabiae was an ancient city situated near the modern town of Castellammare di Stabia and approximately 4.5 km southwest of Pompeii. Like Pompeii, and being only 16 km (9.9 mi) from Mount Vesuvius, this seaside resort was largely buried by tephra ash in 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius, in this case at a shallower depth of up to 5 m.
The Villa Literno–Napoli Gianturco railway is a 16 km-long double track line which connects the line to Rome via Formia with the line to Salerno near Napoli Gianturco station through Naples and its north-western suburbs. This line is used by the metropolitan trains named as line 2.
Milan is the capital of the Lombardy region in northern Italy and is the wealthiest city in Italy. Milan and Lombardy had a GDP of €400 billion and €650 billion respectively in 2017. Milan surpassed Berlin in the size of its economy in 2014, and has since been the richest city among the Four Motors for Europe. It is a member of the Blue Banana corridor among Europe's economic leaders.
Rubens Santoro was an Italian painter.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Lettere-Gragnano was a Latin Catholic diocese located in the commune of Lettere in the Metropolitan City of Naples in the southern-central Italian region Campania. In 1818, it was merged into the Diocese of Castellammare di Stabia.
The ecclesiastical region of Campania is one of the sixteen ecclesiastical regions of the Catholic Church in Italy. It consists of three ecclesiastical provinces, twenty-two dioceses, one territorial prelature, and two territorial abbeys. Its territory roughly corresponds with the Italian Republic homonymous region's one.