In Naples the most photographed metro station is not famous for its trains. Toledo goes down below the water table, somewhere between forty and fifty metres, and its light well is lined with blue mosaics that shift from turquoise to indigo as you descend. It is the best known of the art stations, a programme that has put more than two hundred works by contemporary artists inside the metro, and you see it for the price of a ride. This article covers three of them: Toledo, Università and Materdei.
Before you go down, though, a word about the ticket: the 1.30 euro one buys a single ride and does not let you leave one station and come back in at another. If you want to go up to the street between stops, you need the integrated ticket, 1.80 euros for 90 minutes, or the day pass at 4.50 euros, which pays off if you also take a funicular that day. And the main works are beyond the turnstiles, so you need a ticket anyway.
What are Dante and Beatrice doing on the stairs of a station that looks like a computer render?
Why Naples put contemporary art underfoot
How did the idea of putting more than two hundred artworks inside a metro line come about? It wasn’t added as decoration once the building was done: the programme was entrusted to an art critic, Achille Bonito Oliva, and the works were commissioned from the artists for that exact spot, alongside the design of the stations themselves. These aren’t paintings hung in a corridor, they’re pieces conceived for a platform, an escalator or a ventilation shaft.
The thinking behind the operation is more interesting than the catalogue. A metro station is what anthropology calls a non-place: you pass through it, you don’t stay, you don’t look at it. Naples decided to attack exactly that condition, and the result is that the most photographed stop in the city is a stop.
More stations than the three in this article are involved, spread across line 1 and line 6. I picked these three because they’re the most successful, because all three sit on the stretch that serves the centre, and because you can do them in an hour and a half, turnstiles included.
Toledo, and the difference between the light well and the mosaic that lines it
Toledo carries a single credit for two different things, and they need to be told apart. The station is the deepest in service on line 1 and was designed by the Catalan architect Óscar Tusquets Blanca, who opened it in September 2012. Sources disagree on the exact depth, somewhere between forty and fifty metres, but they agree on one thing: you go down below the water table. The great conical void that drops from the surface, the one in every photograph, is his, and it is architecture: it’s a light well.
The mosaic cladding lining it inside, with blues shifting from turquoise to indigo as you descend, is instead an artwork: it’s called Galleria del mare and it’s by Bob Wilson. The two things together make the effect the station is famous for, and calling them by a single name loses half the work.
In the upper hall stands the Knight of Toledo, an equestrian statue in Corten steel by William Kentridge, and Kentridge also drew the two large mosaics with Neapolitan scenes, executed by Costantino Aureliano Buccolieri. Further along you’ll find the manipulated photographs of Achille Cevoli, from the series Men at Work, and the portraits of Oliviero Toscani.
The awards show how well it was understood outside Italy. In 2012 the Daily Telegraph called it the most beautiful station in Europe and in the world, and CNN ranked it among the ten most spectacular; in 2013 it won the Emirates Leaf International award as public building of the year; in 2015 it received the recognition of the International Tunnelling Association.
Università, where the design has two hands and not one
Almost every write-up gives this station to Karim Rashid, and that isn’t wrong: the colour is his, and colour is the first thing you notice, fuchsia and acid green, with shapes that look pulled from a render. But there are two signatures, and they split at street level: the inside of the station is Rashid’s, while the surface above it, piazza Bovio, is by Alessandro Mendini. Walking up the stairs you change author without noticing.
Among his pieces the most recognisable are Synapsi, which maps a network of nerve connections, and Conversational profile, two black columns carrying a continuous human profile with no beginning. On the platforms are panels with a stereoscopic effect, which shift as you walk past them.
And on the access stairs you will find Dante and Beatrice. In a station that is the network’s most digital statement of intent, the two figures of medieval Italian literature greet those who enter, and not by accident: the previous stop is called Dante. The station opened on 26 March 2011, and by September of the same year it had won the Emirates Leaf International Award in London.
Materdei, the oldest of the three, and an attribution that keeps circulating and is wrong
Materdei opened on 5 July 2003, nine years before Toledo, and it’s the station from which the programme first became known. Its inauguration was attended by the transport ministers of fifteen European Union countries, which for a stop on a residential hill says a great deal about the intentions behind it.
The design is by Alessandro Mendini, who also signed the layout of the square above ground: the station and the stretch of city around it were conceived together. Inside are a mosaic by Sandro Chia, a relief by Luigi Ontani and works by Sol LeWitt, and above Chia’s mosaic opens the glass spire designed by Mendini, which brings light down from above. The Daily Telegraph placed it sixteenth among the most beautiful stations in Europe.
Watch for one attribution that keeps circulating without a source: many write-ups credit Materdei with installations by Michelangelo Pistoletto. Pistoletto doesn’t appear on the station’s list of works, and the names above are the real ones. It’s the kind of error that spreads because nobody checks it: if you go looking for a Pistoletto mirror here, you won’t find one.
The Metro Art Tour, which is free
ANM runs free guided tours of the art stations, led by its own education staff, lasting about ninety minutes. There’s nothing to pay: the only thing you need is a valid transport ticket, the one you need anyway to get past the turnstiles.
The meeting point for the route between Università and Toledo is in the Toledo station hall, at the turnstiles, and the visit ends at Toledo’s second exit, on largo Montecalvario. There are also private tours by appointment, for up to twenty people.
The calendar does change, though, and that’s why you won’t find a fixed day and time here. Tours run in slots that vary with the season and with the city’s events; over the end of year holidays, for instance, they were moved to line 6 and the Chiaia stations. You book by writing to infoarte@anm.it or through ANM’s Eventbrite page, metroart.eventbrite.com, and the updated programme is on metroart.anm.it. Check there before counting on a tour on a specific day.
Practical information
Data checked on 10 September 2026 against two independent sources for each entry, because the operator does not publish a fare page that can be checked automatically. Prices and hours change: check again before you travel.
Tickets. ANM’s single urban ride costs 1.30 euros and covers a single ride on one vehicle. The integrated ticket costs 1.80 euros and is valid for 90 minutes from first validation, so it lets you get off and back on. The day pass costs 4.50 euros, and 5.40 euros in the version integrated with Campania’s other transport operators. Contactless card or phone payment also works at the gates.
Watch out: fares are under review in 2026. A regional resolution provides for a ten cent rise, and the operator has proposed unifying all single rides at 1.50 euros, so sources in circulation give different figures. The real price is the one on the machine on the day you go.
Hours. On line 1 the first train leaves Piscinola at 6:00 and Centro Direzionale at 6:15; the last leaves Centro Direzionale at 23:00 and Piscinola at 22:30. A train every ten minutes from 6:00 to 20:00, every fourteen after 20:00. On Friday and Saturday service is extended until 1:32 from Centro Direzionale and 1:20 from Piscinola.
The three stations were not affected by the summer works. The stretch closed from 22 June to 14 September 2026 for track renewal is Piscinola-Colli Aminei, at the northern end of the line, served during that period by twelve shuttle buses. Toledo, Università and Materdei all sit south of Colli Aminei and ran throughout the closure.
Getting there. These are stops on line 1, so the metro itself gets you there. Toledo and Università are one stop apart and sit right in the centre; Materdei is three stops further up, toward the hill.
Why this page shows only photographs of Toledo. The works in the art stations are by living or recent artists, and in Italy reproductions of a protected work cannot be freely reused. Free images of Toledo exist that frame the architectural shell; for Università, where Karim Rashid designed the entire installation, and for Materdei’s mural, I found none. Those two stations are meant to be seen in person.
How much time it takes. An hour and a half for all three stations at a relaxed pace, counting the trips back up to street level. Forty minutes if you stop only at Toledo and Università, which are next to each other.
The rest of Naples
Toledo is also the stop for the Gallerie d’Italia, which open two hundred metres further on, still on via Toledo, and hold the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, Caravaggio’s last painting. It’s the most efficient way to use a single ticket: you get off at the station and end up in front of a Caravaggio.
If what interests you is contemporary art in Naples and not just the stations, the museum to add is the Madre, where the first floor rooms were commissioned from artists on the same principle as these platforms.
From Università you’re inside Greco-Roman Naples within five minutes: the lower decumanus with the Donatello at Sant’Angelo a Nilo, the Sansevero Chapel, the majolica cloister of Santa Chiara and the nativity street of San Gregorio Armeno.
If the underground interests you more than contemporary art, there are two other visits below Naples that have nothing to do with the metro: Naples Underground at piazza San Gaetano, with its Greek cisterns, and the Bourbon Tunnel, which dates to the nineteenth century. To fit everything else together, with each monument’s closing days, see what to see in Naples in 2 days.
Photo credits: the three photographs of Toledo station are by Mint0ri, released under CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
