NAPLES, Italy — Via dei Tribunali is one of Naples’ busiest arteries, filled with restaurants and shops. Down one of its side alleys stands a bronze statue of Pulcinella, the trickster who has long symbolized the city. In high season, the queue to rub his nose can stretch half a kilometer as tourists chase an ancient Neapolitan good-luck ritual.
But locals know that tradition is fake.
The statue was erected only in the 2010s, and was largely ignored by Neapolitans. Only in recent years influencers discovered it, fabricated a folkloric backstory, and suddenly no tourist felt their trip to Naples was complete without it. The result is a paradoxical “local” tradition without any locals — and a good example of what overtourism is doing to Italian cities.
“The historic center of Naples is dead,” said sociologist and activist Francesco Calicchia, who lives and works in the working-class Sanità neighborhood. “Those streets aren’t neighborhoods anymore. There are no Neapolitans left, no real life left. They’ve become playgrounds, open-air shopping malls.”
Sipping a coffee on Via Foria, just outside the tourist grid, he noticed a shirtless man ambling past, dragging a suitcase down the middle of the street. “The problem,” Calicchia said, eying the man cutting across the street, “is that this kind of tourism isn’t being managed or controlled.”
Many cities across Italy are wrestling with the same pressures. But Naples — with its tangled history and outspoken residents — offers a particularly vivid case study.
Activists, workers, experts and local politicians all argue that overtourism is hollowing out the fabric of the city — and while it’s often touted as a source of money and jobs, they say it mostly enriches the wealthy instead.
Housing scarcity
One of the main ways tourism is reshaping Naples is through its impact on housing.
“Short-term rentals have grown exponentially in Naples, just like in other Italian cities,” said Chiara Capretti, a municipal councilor and member of Resta Abitante — an association defending the right to housing — as she hunted for a free table in the tourist-clogged San Domenico Square.
In some working-class districts, there’s one B&B for every three homes. “If this were happening in wealthier neighborhoods, locals might absorb higher rents and rising costs,” said Ivan Avella, a local urban planning graduate. “But in poorer districts, the impact is much harsher. The area stays poor — but now it’s also touristy.”
The result is that residents are being displaced. “There’s been a noticeable increase in evictions,” Capretti said.
Giuseppe Giglio, a humanitarian worker who also moonlights as a tour guide in Naples, is one of many pushed out by the B&B boom.
In 2023, his landlord told him he was converting the apartment into a business project backed by state funds to spur investment in southern Italy. For the landlord it seemed easier — and more profitable — to evict Giglio and turn the apartment into a short-term rental.
Before his notice period was even up, Giglio woke one morning to find workers already tearing out gas pipes in the next room.
“I lost everything and ended up crashing with friends, my cat in tow, until I could move into another place. For a while, I was literally on the street,” he recounted over the phone before his work shift. But what shocked him most was how quickly the whole building was transformed.
“That building is still home to families who’ve lived there for generations … but many of them don’t have the tools — financial or cultural — to fight situations like this,” he said. “Four floors, two apartments per floor, all the apartments on my side — first, second, and fourth floors — have been converted into short-term rentals, bed and breakfasts, or student housing.”
“So gradually, one by one, long-term residents have been pushed out to make room for tourists and temporary renters.”
“I once heard about an elderly Neapolitan woman who lived in the city center and couldn’t get home because the streets were too crowded,” said Gaia Portolano, who works at a tourist infopoint, explaining what it’s like to coexist with overtourism. “A tourist overheard her complaining and told her that she was the one living in the wrong place.”
The pressure on Naples’ housing is so intense that local urban planning discussions now revolve around investing in the eastern part of the city, Capretti said, which is full of neglected and abandoned areas. The idea is to “recover lost livability in the historic center by building it in the eastern zone” — supposedly by moving residents out of the city center to make room for tourists.
Supporters of the tourism boom argue that platforms like Airbnb can benefit small landlords.
However, in 2023 Avella noted that almost two-thirds of Airbnb hosts owned more than one property, and the top five hosts controlled roughly 500 listings. He suggested that means the largest landlords are companies, not people. And even when owners are individuals, they are often from wealthier cities like Rome or Milan, he added.
“There’s no redistribution of money locally,” Calicchia said, adding that Naples is being used as a postcard for Italy while the profits flow north or abroad.
One striking example, he added, is an ancient residential building in the central square of Rione Sanità. The Turin-based coffee giant Lavazza painted a mural on the façade, blending Neapolitan slang with a street art style popularized in town by football fan murals — and even added a QR code linking to the company’s website.
“This is what Naples has become,” he says. “An open-air supermarket for northern Italian companies that come here and take pieces of our neighborhoods.”
Some Italian cities and regions have tried to regulate the Airbnb explosion, but local officials say their hands are tied without national backing. In fact, critics argue the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has only made matters worse.
Capretti, who is part of the left-wing Power to the People opposition party, said new laws make it easier to renovate apartments and change their intended use. She pointed to a 2024 law, promoted by current Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini, which introduced measures to simplify construction and urban planning.
Meloni’s government also challenged a law in Italy’s northern Tuscany region that allowed municipal administrations, in agreement with the region, to identify zones where they could set rules and limits on short-term rentals. The central government argued it restricted business freedom and competition.
“There’s still no national law on short-term rentals, and that’s obviously a problem for local governments,” Capretti said, adding that municipalities and regions can only do so much. “The real decisions can only be made at the national level.”
“We need a national law to set some boundaries,” confirmed Gennaro Acampora, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party in Naples’ City Council. He suggested urban plans to set a maximum percentage of short-term rentals to prevent the displacement of residents.
Inauthentic cities
Visitors are drawn to Naples and to Italy for what they see as authenticity — vibrant street life, colorful murals, food culture and the warmth of local people. But as residents are priced out, that very authenticity is eroding.
Critics increasingly describe the city’s historic center as an “open-air fry shop,” overrun by stalls selling near-identical snacks. International chains keep multiplying, leaving locals asking how many pizzerias can realistically fit on a single street.
“On Via Toledo, in 46 meters, there was only one food-related business in 2015. By 2023, there were already five — one every 9 meters,” said Avella, referring to one of Naples’ busiest thoroughfares.
This proliferation of eateries has displaced important local landmarks. The Pironti bookstore in Dante Square, where generations of students bought their schoolbooks, has been replaced by a tavern.
City authorities tried to curb the restaurant boom by allowing new businesses only in certain cases, such as if they offered something beyond food. The unintended result, explained Capretti, is that “now every tavern calls itself a book-osteria.”
The boom in food tourism has also amplified long-running waste management challenges. Disposable packaging from takeout businesses piles up in the streets, much of it left by visitors. “In many neighborhoods, it’s now impossible to walk without being hit by the constant smell of frying,” Capretti complained.
The transformation is also tearing at the social fabric. The city’s homeless population, once a visible part of central Naples, has been pushed into other neighborhoods.
“What happens if I install uncomfortable benches — or remove them altogether? Suddenly, staying isn’t an option. A tourist won’t notice, because they rarely stop,” but residents will, said Adolfo Baratta, an architecture professor at Rome’s Roma Tre University.
“In city centers, public restrooms have all but disappeared, and it’s a real problem,” added Baratta. “Someone who needs a toilet is forced to go into a café and consume, or else relieve themselves in the street. You’re being pushed into private consumption because a public service is no longer offered.”
This logic, he said, disproportionately affects the poor.
“Homeless people are expelled, also because their presence is deemed unpleasant for tourists. They’re pushed out of historic centers and given no conditions to remain. If you can’t even lie on a bench, you’re forced to move. But has the problem been solved? No — it’s just been shifted elsewhere.”
Praying for change
Even religious practices are changing. Churches that once served as gathering places for residents are now tourist attractions, pushing worship out of the historic center.
“Of course, places of worship located in areas that have become economically unsustainable lose their community of faithful. And it’s not just happening in Naples,” said Domenico Bilotti, a professor of canon law at Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro.
If younger generations are forced to live ever farther from their workplaces because city centers are economically inaccessible, he said, churches and religious associations will take on new roles. “They become welfare providers.”
Culture is also tailored for tourists and not locals, often becoming too expensive. “Many things that were free are now paid,” confirmed Marina Minniti, an activist with Mi Riconosci, a group defending cultural workers’ rights.
Ironically, tourism often erases the very qualities that attracted visitors in the first place. Avella said that in his research, speaking directly with tourists, he has started to notice some complaints that there are simply too many food businesses and that the city’s commercial life feels increasingly lopsided.
“Tourism isn’t going to stay this strong forever,” Calicchia warned. “Without political planning and a plan B, letting it continue unchecked carries serious risks.” He sipped his coffee and told the story of a woman from his neighborhood who once worked as a cleaner.
“The lady got a couple of B&Bs to host, and her son opened a bar and also took on a couple of B&Bs. So, you see, tourism can be a way to escape poverty quickly,” he said.
“But the problem is there’s no plan B when tourism dries up, like it is doing now,” he added, referring to the recent flattening of visitor numbers in Naples. “She had to close her B&Bs because fewer tourists are coming now. She had to take a job in a restaurant, but that’s only until it closes too, because that too, like everything else, depends on tourism.”
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