Boat Tours & Day Cruises from Naples

Sixteen well-reviewed day trips leave Naples, in four groups. The island runs — Capri by boat at $98, the small-group Capri swim day at $163, Ischia with lunch at $93 — genuinely spend the day on the water. The Amalfi Coast trips from $49 are coach days with one ferry leg. The city cruises, $41 with an aperitivo and $74 at sunset, never leave the bay. The Baia semi-submarine at $35 runs fifty minutes over a sunken Roman city, twenty kilometres west.

They do not share a departure point. Scheduled hydrofoils go from Molo Beverello, car ferries from Calata Porta di Massa a kilometre east, some Capri and Ischia hydrofoils from Mergellina four kilometres west, and the small tour boats from Molo Luise and Borgo Marinari at Santa Lucia, which no metro serves. Beverello is eight minutes on foot from Municipio on metro lines 1 and 6; the others are not.

If all you want is to stand on Capri, Ischia or Procida, the public boats do it for a fraction of a guided day — Caremar carries foot passengers to Procida for €9.80 — and the arithmetic is below, with what the cheap ticket leaves out.

Molo Beverello is the hydrofoil and fast-ferry terminal, rebuilt in glass and steel at the foot of Piazza Municipio. Foot-passenger services to Capri, Ischia, Procida and Sorrento leave from here, and in summer the coastal fast ferries to Positano and Amalfi. It is the easiest pier to reach: Municipio station serves metro lines 1 and 6, and the ticket booths are about 300 metres downhill.

Calata Porta di Massa sits a kilometre east, past the Immacolatella. This is the car-ferry quay — Caremar to Ischia, Procida and Capri, and the overnight ships to Palermo and Catania. The boats are slower, considerably cheaper, and heavy enough to keep sailing on days the hydrofoils are cancelled. No metro serves the gate; it is a flat fifteen-minute walk from Beverello.

Mergellina is the western pier, four kilometres away at the end of the Chiaia seafront, with its own Line 2 station. Some Capri and Ischia hydrofoils run from here rather than Beverello, and the summer sailings to Ponza, Ventotene and the Aeolian islands are guaranteed from Mergellina. A voucher that says Naples and means Mergellina is the classic way to miss a boat.

Molo Luise and Borgo Marinari, on the Santa Lucia waterfront below Castel dell'Ovo, are marinas rather than terminals, and this is where the small tour boats load. Borgo Marinari is the islet of Megaride across a short causeway; operators there commonly meet passengers at the Lucio Dalla steps by the Royal Yacht Club Savoia. No metro reaches either, and it is fifteen minutes downhill from Piazza del Plebiscito.

Two departure points are not in Naples at all: the Baia semi-submarine leaves from Bacoli, twenty kilometres west on the Cumana railway, and the Pompeii and Amalfi shore excursion starts at Salerno port. Read the meeting point before the itinerary.

The Gulf of Naples is sheltered by Capri and the Sorrentine peninsula, which is why it looks calm from the Lungomare on days when it is not. Swell cancels departures here, not rain, and unevenly: hydrofoils go first, because a foil-borne hull cannot take a beam sea, while the car ferries out of Calata Porta di Massa run until conditions are genuinely dangerous. If a crossing matters and the forecast is doubtful, Porta di Massa is the more reliable ticket.

The wind to know is the libeccio from the southwest, which drives a long swell into the mouth of the gulf and closes the Grotta Azzurra however sunny it is; the scirocco brings a short steep sea and the tramontana mostly troubles small boats. Suspensions come from the Capitaneria di Porto, not the operators, so they apply to every company at once. Book morning slots — second departures are cancelled far more often than first ones.