Naples explains itself through coffee, and that's probably the best place to start understanding the city ahead of the Louis Vuitton 38th America's Cup Preliminary Regatta.
Coffee here has never really been just a drink. Luciano De Crescenzo once called it an "excuse" to spend time with someone, and that idea runs right through the city's culture, its theatre, its music, its daily habits.
Eduardo De Filippo gave coffee one of the most memorable scenes in his play Questi fantasmi!, with Pasquale Lojacono brewing it on his balcony in a traditional Neapolitan cuccumella, turning an ordinary act into something to share with his neighbour. Pino Daniele took a darker view in 1977, using 'Na tazzulella 'e cafè, a little cup of coffee, to capture the contradictions of his city.
Out of that relationship comes one of Naples' most distinctive customs: the caffè sospeso.
It works like this. Someone orders two coffees but drinks only one. The second stays "suspended", already paid for, waiting for a stranger who might walk in later and ask if there's one going spare.
The two people never meet. No thanks are exchanged. It's anonymous, quick and quietly generous, someone simply had a little more to give that day.
Treccani records it as a Neapolitan custom, though nobody can pin down exactly when it began. What matters more is what it has come to mean: giving something to a stranger, expecting nothing back.
It's hard to imagine that tradition growing around anything other than coffee in this city.
An espresso here marks out the day. Drunk standing at the counter on the way to work. Offered the moment a guest arrives. Used as an excuse to linger a few minutes longer with someone. "Let's have a coffee" in Naples rarely means just drinking what's in the cup.
Much of life in Naples happens together, out loud, in public. Food sits at the centre of the table. Streets, squares and the corner shop aren't just places people pass through; they're where the city actually happens, and conversations have a habit of pulling in whoever's nearby.
That openness has deep roots. Naples has spent centuries looking out over the Mediterranean, welcoming people and influences from elsewhere while somehow staying unmistakably itself.
Which is really what the caffè sospeso is about, in the end. Not the coffee, but the idea behind it: sharing something with someone you haven't met yet.
When the America's Cup Preliminary Regatta comes to town, that same instinct for welcome will extend to sailors, teams and visitors arriving from everywhere. The experience won't stay confined to the racecourse. It will spill into the waterfront cafés, the restaurants and the backstreets, in all the small everyday encounters that show visitors a side of Naples the guidebooks miss.
Coffee will be part of that, inevitably.
Kimbo was founded in Naples in 1963 by the Rubino brothers, with the goal of carrying the city's coffee tradition beyond its own streets. That local habit has since grown into something recognised well beyond Italy.
Now named Official Coffee of the Louis Vuitton 38th America's Cup 2027, Kimbo carries that Neapolitan identity into one of the biggest events in world sport, travelling alongside teams, athletes, partners and guests on the way to Naples 2027.
It's a fitting pairing, in a way. A brand shaped by tradition, arriving with a competition built on international exchange, hosted by a city that has always managed to be both.
Because in Naples, welcome isn't a formal thing. It's a seat at the table, a conversation that starts by accident, something offered to be shared. Small gestures, repeated daily, through which the city keeps opening itself up to whoever turns up next.
