The capital of the Campania region and the largest city in Southern Italy, Naples – with its beautiful setting and expressive people – has always put on a show. Critics speak of its dark side, but it seems to be cleaning up its act. Spend a long weekend discovering the historical city's rich artistic heritage or simply wandering its streets and soaking up the atmosphere.

Where to eat out in Naples

Veritas

Veritas’s ardent young team, which includes a spice and seed expert, harvest millennia of Parthenopean recipes and the hallowed fruits of Campania Felix (stone-ground wheat from Gragnano, San Marzano tomatoes, Greco de Tufo from Avellino’s vineyards) in seasonal dishes from the terroir. Like shy head chef Gianluca D’Agostino, most hail from generations of farmers; and this is the earthy version of Michelin-starred cooking. Traditional contadino soul-food dishes are tirelessly perfected and tweaked to become divine versions of themselves. In the wallpapered dining room in Chiaia, spaghetti with butter, anchovies, pine nuts and lettuce perfumed with bergamot regularly makes guests weep.

Mattozzi L’Europeo

It’s not unusual to find Neapolitan actor Toni Servillo eating ziti alla genovese beneath the hanging copper pots and guilt-framed oils of Mattozzi L’Europeo - or his La Grande Bellezza director Paolo Sorrentino who is married to cashmere-clad owner Alfonso's niece. This trattoria off Corso Umberto I has something of cult status; not just because it was once also a regular of Vittorio Gassman et al; nor that it has remained in the family since 1852. It’s just that a long lunch at Mattozzi’s is just so goddamn pleasurable, the traditional dishes - from spaghetti alle vongole to baccalà - so consistently delivered. And, as the Mattozzis know: constancy is the ace of the long game.

Altro Coco Loco

'There is no love sincerer than the love of food' is the George Bernard Shaw quote outside of the smart Altro Coco Loco. That love is deeper still with empty stomach, making the hungry persist in their search for Diego Nuzzo’s lauded seafood restaurant up a hard-to-find alley near Piazza Dei Martiri in Chiaia. Under a ceiling hanging with baskets and botanicals, plates of bay-fresh ‘crudo’, carpaccio and sashimi are served like the delicate works of origami followed by jade bowls of lobster linguini as big as carp ponds. Low lighting and velvet banquettes seem to up the aphrodisiacal properties of zinc-laden shellfish.

Concettina ai Tre Santi

Naples’ foodie Che Guevara, 26-year old Ciro Oliva has led the revolutionary charge not only of the contemporary pizza but also of his formerly-troubled neighbourhood Rione Sanita’ at fifth-generation eatery Concettina ai Tre Santi. (His friends at plucky pizza institution Sorbillo have always stood up to the Camorra) Now half of Italy is cheering for Ciro. Fiercely proud of his roots, his slow-food pizzas are incarnations of olfactory memories of his childhood streets: Sunday ragu’, octopus alla luciana and spaghetti alle vongole, which is magicked into a pure sauce of just virgin olive oil and littleneck clams that induces a kind of sensual euphoria. Staff are all Rione boys-made-good and the witty ceramics are made in the area.

WHERE TO DRINK IN NAPLES

L’Antiquario

L’Antiquario, in a former antique shop in Chiaia, might not seem very Neapolitan: a Hemingway-era speakeasy filled with jazzy drum rolls that make even the botanicals on William Morris wallpaper do the 'Mess Around'. But - cue hi-hat - it was recently named the best cocktail bar in Italy; consolidating Naples as Italy’s new capital of cool. Owner Alex Frezza, from the Neapolitan island of Prochida - all moustache, manners and mixologists white coat - serves up three shades of Negroni in cut crystal glasses.(+39 081 1981 2354). Vomero drinking den Archivio Storico, on the other hand, is a direct homage to Bourbon-era Naples: the drips of candle wax suggest a 300-year-long lock in. Some of the cocktails hail back to the 1700s, with antiques spices used in the likes of the Bourbon-based Giulebbe è Zuccaro.

Officina

The Liberty-style Officina, a black-and-brass gem in Santa Lucia, is the creative sets’s haunt for bayside aperitivos: it was set up a Neapolitan collective of a film director, journalist and a lawyer, whose other ventures include a production company. (+39 081 764 6270). In the centro storico, Gigi Crispino runs gallery-wine bar Salumeria Upnea (an abbreviation of Up Neapolis in the vein of Up Pompeii) in an industrial space serving plates and boards with wines such as Lacryma Christi from Vesuvius and Piedirosso from the Phlegraean Fields.

Intra Moenia

Attilio Wanderlingh upgraded Piazza Bellini from seedy to bohemian when he opened literary cafe Intra Moenia; but the city’s most legendary salon remains Gran Caffe Gambrinus, opened around Italian Unification and patronised during the Belle Epoque by Jean Paul Satre, Neo-Realist philosopher Benedetto Croce and futurist Fillipo Tomasso Marinetti. Perfect for a pre-Opera glass of Franciacorta to toast Naples’ creative renaissance.