‘Tourists are untouchable’: How Naples’ mafia is cashing in on the city’s boom

As visitors flock to the Italian city in record numbers, the Camorra has found lucrative new opportunities in bars, B&Bs and beach businessesExplosive growth in tourism saw the number of visitors to Naples increase 87 per cent between 2022 and 2025. Photograph: Roberto Salomone/Bloomberg via Getty From bars to beach umbrellas to short-term holiday lets, the Camorra mafia of Naples is cashing in on a tourism boom that has seen a surge of visitors and cash into the southern Italian city, experts say.Explosive growth in tourism to the once-gritty metropolis saw the number of visitors to Naples increase 87 per cent between 2022 and 2025, according to figures from the local city council, bringing a big financial influx.“The Camorra evolves and adapts to its surroundings. At the moment, that context is tourism,” says Emanuela Perillo (27) of the Italian organised crime resistance group Libera, as she took part in a walkabout of young anti-mafia activists in the Sanità district in Naples’ historic centre, traditionally associated with the Camorra.“The Camorra is opening venues directly,” says the 27-year-old. This is what many shopkeepers are telling us. There’s clearly a growing demand for spritz bars and Airbnb-type accommodation. And this is driving local residents out."READ MORELibera activist Emanuela Perillo. Photograph: Naomi O'Leary Napoli flags in the Sanità district of Naples. Photograph: Ivan Romano/Getty Within a few years the influx of visitors has transformed the narrow streets of the historic city centre from a densely populated, gritty residential area dominated by locals to an environment of bars, takeaways and gift shops designed to attract tourist spending.A 2023 study found that the number of listings for Naples on Airbnb – the city’s most-used short-term letting platform – increased 553 per cent between 2015 and 2019, with rentals concentrated in low-income neighbourhoods in its historic centre.“The phenomenon of overtourism has made the short-term accommodation sector a formidable industry,” says Roberto Saviano, the author of several bestselling books about the mafia.“The Camorra buys entire buildings in the neighbourhoods and alleys and converts them into B&Bs. It manages the entire supply chain, as it did previously with the traditional hotel sector.”Though the Camorra remains deeply embedded in the social fabric of Naples and its surrounding region, which in pockets has some of the worst deprivation and poverty in Europe, the city nevertheless has lower rates of petty crime and street crime than other Italian cities.Part of the reason is because tourists are under the Camorra’s “protection”, says Saviano.“Tourists are untouchable. They are still robbed sometimes, but by people who steal without authorisation from the clans, and if the clans catch them they break their hands,” he says.[ Roberto Saviano on living under threat from the Mafia and similarities between Ireland and ItalyOpens in new window ]“Theft still exists, but by desperate people. In the Spanish quarter, in the areas where they have their B&Bs, the clans protect tourists.”Ironically, the interest of organised crime in maintaining tourist numbers has made streets feel safer, says Perillo, the anti-mafia activist. “In some ways we feel better off, we feel safer on the streets, but it’s going on in the background.”International flags fly in front of a mural of Naples' patron saint, San Gennaro. Photograph: Naomi O'Leary Visitors to Naples view the historic districts of the city below from the terrace opposite Castel Sant'Elmo. Photograph: Richard Baker/In Pictures via Getty Naples anti-mafia police were not immediately available for comment, but campaigners note that it can take some time for investigations to gather sufficient proof for a legal case, even if the involvement of the Camorra in tourist businesses in Naples is widely talked about locally.In July local police raided a Camorra-linked beach umbrella rental operation that was illegally charging people to use Mappatella beach on the Naples shoreline, which is supposed to be freely open to the public.“Many are deceived by these individuals and are convinced that they have to pay to swim and sunbathe on the beach. We have identified numerous tourists who believe that renting out these umbrellas was an official activity carried out by the council,” local Chiaia police unit commander Bruno Capuano told Il Mattino newspaper.“Operations like this serve not only to restore law and order, but also to restore a better image of the city to the many tourists who visit and the residents who live there.”The Camorra, which is made up of a patchwork of family-based clans who rule patches of territory in Naples and the Campania region, have a history of involvement in hospitality businesses.Over the years Italian police have repeatedly shut down coffee rackets, a method pioneered by the Camorra’s Casalesi clan. It involves mafia foot soldiers forcing bars, restaurants and delicatessens to buy low-quality coffee at a punishing mark-up, sold by a real business set up for the purpose by mafia bosses. Businesses that refuse are violently intimidated.In 2014 authorities shut down 27 bars and restaurants in Italy associated with the Pizza Ciro chain, a business empire established by a Naples family to launder the proceeds of a Camorra kidnapping and which was in the process of expanding to Spain, the United Kingdom and China.Gigi Cannavacciolo (29) in a neighbourhood of Naples traditionally affected by organised crime. Photograph: Naomi O'Leary For 29-year-old Gigi Cannavacciuolo, a regional organiser for the Libera anti-mafia organisation, the Camorra’s involvement in the Naples tourism boom is the latest step in the mafia’s “entrepreneurialisation”: an increasing involvement in legitimate businesses both in Naples and internationally to launder the proceeds of extortion, drug trafficking and illegal waste disposal.“They’re very good at operating in legal markets, playing on the boundary between legality and illegality,” Cannavacciuolo says.“It’s very much in the legal market – in the relationship with government, politicians, entrepreneurs – that the real business is going on and where the funds from their drug trafficking are laundered.”IN THIS SECTION