  Description of nuclear matter in the core of neutron stars eludes the main
tools of investigation of QCD, such as perturbation theory and the lattice
formulation of the theory. Recently, the application of the holographic
paradigm (both via top-down and bottom-up models) to this task has led to many
encouraging results, both qualitatively and quantitatively. We present our
approach to the description of neutron star cores, relying on a simple model of
the (double) hard-wall type: we discuss results concerning the nature of
homogeneous nuclear matter at high density emerging from the model including a
quarkyonic phase, the mass-radius relation for neutron stars, as well as the
rather stiff equation of state we have found. We show how, despite the very
simple model employed, for an appropriate calibration we are able to obtain
neutron stars that only slightly fall short of the observational bounds on
radius and tidal deformability.
