I spent lunch time with a Professor at the school in Naples, along with two students from Germany who have been studying here for a long time. I learned some interesting things about Naples.

She mentioned that Naples is the second most visited city in Italy, after Rome. I said there is no way that is possible. It's Rome, Venice, Florence, and according to some surveys, Venice sometimes even beats out Rome for first place. The three of them looked at me as if I am completely out of touch. They said, "That's not what the mayor says, that's not what the newspaper says, that's not what the statistics show." They went on to explain why Naples has become so popular with tourists, and why the number of visitors has skyrocketed. It went up 16% just last year.

We had a vigorous discussion, using our laptops to do internet searches to make our respective cases. It is true. A graph of the number of visitors to Naples basically is an arrow shooting straight upward. This is hidden to most readers of english media.

First, the Professor discounted the 42 million people who visit Venice each year. She said, "You can't count them as visitors to Venice. The average length of stay of someone visiting Venice is something like 12 hours. Half of them are people who get off of a cruise ship, cram themselves into Piazza San Marco, do the walk along the narrow streets to the Rialto Bridge, then head back to the cruise ship. They didn't visit Venice." With that, I had to agree.

Then, she told me to stop doing google searches in english, to do it in italian, because who and what constitutes a tourist is different, according to your point of view. For example, after Rome, the most visited city is Milan. I said, "That cannot be, nobody goes to Milan. It's an industrial, traffic burdened, urban disaster zone. Outside of the opera, the Duomo, and one famous painting, there's not very much."

Then I learned that the number of tourists is counted not only by how long you stay, as in Venice, where most people say they "did Venice," but don't stay in Venice, the number of tourists is also counted as in Italian tourists, and foreign tourists. 56% of the people counted as tourists visiting Milan are Italians on a business trip. The other 44% are foreigners, almost all of whom are on a business trip. Nevertheless, by the numbers, Milan is #2 in tourism because of business travel, although few people go there for purposes of actual tourism.

It gets really complicated when you exclude, for example, day trippers to Venice from a cruise ship. It gets complicated when you have to decide if a Roman visiting Venice is a tourist.

Going by what is the Italian view, at least as held by my Professor friend, she considers herself a tourist when she visits other cities, and hopes to some day visit Venice. It's not any different from somebody living in Austin who visits Boston. When in Boston, they count as a tourist. If you just pass through for less than a day, it doesn't count, as in people who see (but don't visit) Venice from a cruise line.

These are the official numbers of the cities most visited by tourists, as counted by Italian sources, governmental, media, etc.

Number one is Rome, and that will not ever change.

Number two is a toss up between Milan and Venice, with the numbers of Milan being somewhat inflated by the World's Fair they had last year.

In fourth place, of all places, is Pisa, for the leaning tower, and its Piazza dei Miracoli.

In fifth place is Naples, sixth is Palermo, seventh is Catania in Sicily.

Eight is Florence. Tenth is Alghero. Eleventh is Verona. Twelfth is Bari and Cagliari. Fourteenth is Torino. Fifteenth is Genoa, sixteenth is Trapani in Sicily.

Then comes Brindisi, Olbia, Lamezia Terme, and in 20th place, Trieste. The problem is, we only think of tourists from the USA, not from other countries.

Quite a different viewpoint than what one gets from the USA, where the only places that seem to exist are Rome, Venice, and Florence! The professor told me that the launch of Naples pretty much started 5-6 years ago, and showed me some impressive graphs.

I was very surprised by what I learned, so I did some, "field research." I went for a very long walk in very diverse neighborhoods, and would ask the bartenders and patrons, "Has this city changed in the last five years or so?" They'd practically choke on their coffee, saying the changes have been unbelievable.

Knowing that there could be some local pride coloring their responses, I asked if it is a popular destination for tourists. The responses I'll generally summarize as, "Of course, in the last five years we've become number one, because people don't just come here for a day. We are one of the oldest cities in the world, and our historic center is intact. In Rome, Venice, Florence, the locals don't go to the historic center to eat, because the food is tourist junk. Don't think you are going to see a Florentine eating in the historic center of Florence. In other cities, you have to leave the historic center to eat. In Naples, when we want to eat, we go to the historic center. There is no touristic food in the historic center. On the Lungomare (waterfront), that is where the tourists eat their overpriced, junk food. Unlike any other major city, when we want to eat, we go to the historic center because it remains authentic. Five to ten years ago, we had problems with garbage and crime. Now, that is all controlled (I asked if really, you can walk from the downtown historic center to Via Toledo at midnight by yourself, something most people wouldn't be comfortable with, and they looked at me askance, even young woman behind a bar, told me they don't have any problem with that, because people and police are everywhere, it's no longer deserted.). Why would anyone want to visit another city? We have the most beautiful view of Vesuvius, we have the best museum after Uffizi and the Vatican, except ours you can walk into and see the same quality of work and be by yourself, not in a crowd of 1000 trying to take a photo over someone's shoulder. In a short ride you can visit any number of cities with ancient Greek ruins, we have more ancient Greek ruins than Greece has. We have Pompeii and Ercolano. We have the Sorrentine Coast. We have the indescribably Amalfi Coast, heaven on earth. We have three islands to visit, Capri, Procida, Ischia. And of course, nobody doubts our food."

That is what I was bombarded with. They went on to explain the this is why Naples doesn't have day trippers, or even two day trippers. There is so much to do in this part of Italy, that you need a week.

After a while, they started to sound like Venetians, complaining about how many tourists. They said that over Christmas season, there wasn't even one available hotel room in the city. The streets were so crowded, you couldn't even walk.

Finally, I asked during my, "field research," where are all of these tourists coming from? The response was mostly France, because here there is no worry of going to a tourist destination that would be targeted for terrorism, which the French consider very strongly in their plans, and also English, but a lot from Asia, especially Chinese and Japanese. I asked about Americans. A few said, "Yes, we are starting to see people from the USA too." Except when I asked people on the touristy Lungomare, where they said yes, the prevailing opinion was "No, the explosion of tourists has not included Americans. They are laboring under fear and false impressions."

In my opinion, I've been coming here every year for a while here. I've never lived here for longer than one summer. I think the changes that I see are amazing. It is a different city. I'll add that a visit to Naples and visiting Pompeii is now the second most popular tourist thing to do in Italy from a world perspective, second only to going to Rome and visiting the Colosseo.