The “International Exhibition of Navigation” was held in Naples, Italy, from May 15 to October 15, 1954. A special exhibition under the 1928 Convention, it was organized by the Ente autonomo Mostra d'Oltremare, the public body that managed the exhibition grounds of the same name in the Campi Flegrei area. Its theme was navigation; the Expo covered 100 hectares and welcomed 25 participants.

The Mostra d'Oltremare had opened in 1940 as the site of the first Triennale delle Terre italiane d'Oltremare, an exhibition of Italy's overseas territories held under the Fascist regime from May 15 to October 19, 1940. Marcello Canino laid out its urban grid, with contributions from Luigi Piccinato and Carlo Cocchia. The complex was damaged during World War II, and some of its buildings served military purposes; the Libya pavilion, for example, was used as a United States military hospital. After repairs in the early 1950s, the grounds reopened in 1952 with an exhibition on Italian labor in the world, and the Libya pavilion was converted by Cocchia and Matteo Corbi into a pavilion of Italian labor in North America.

Expo 1954 Naples brought an international program to the restored grounds two years later. Surviving photographs give a sense of the industrial displays: one, by the Neapolitan photographer Ugo Sarto, shows the stand of Italian aluminium producers with a Fleming-type lifeboat built of light alloy. Expo 1954 Naples gave the rebuilt Mostra d'Oltremare an international role in the decade after the war, with the sea and shipping as its subject.