The National Archaeological Museum of Naples, the MANN, houses what Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae gave back: statues, mosaics, frescoes and everyday objects. It is considered one of the most important archaeological museums in the world and...
The Royal Palace of Naples stands in Piazza del Plebiscito and is the grand residence of the Spanish viceroys, the Bourbons and the Savoys. Inside you can visit the nineteenth-century apartments, a chapel with a famous nativity scene, a little...
The Basilica of San Lorenzo Maggiore is one of the oldest churches in Naples, in the historic center near Piazza San Gaetano. Above is a Gothic Franciscan church, below the Greek-Roman excavations of the square where the ancient city held its...
The Basilica of Santa Chiara is the great Gothic church of the Angevins, in the heart of Naples, on Via Benedetto Croce, opposite Piazza del Gesù Nuovo. The complex includes the monastery with its majolica cloister, the Roman excavations and a...
The Maschio Angioino, or Castel Nuovo, is the fortress with five round towers that dominates Piazza Municipio, facing the port. It is one of the symbols of Naples: a medieval and Renaissance castle-palace that today houses a civic museum and its...
The Duomo of Naples, the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, is where the rite of the liquefaction of the blood of Saint Januarius, the city's patron, is repeated three times a year. It stands on Via Duomo, in the historic center, and beneath the...
The Capodimonte Museum is Naples' great picture gallery, inside a Bourbon palace on the hill of Capodimonte, set in a park. It holds mostly paintings: the Farnese collection with Titian, Raphael and Correggio, the Neapolitan Gallery, a royal...
Castel dell'Ovo is the oldest castle in Naples, on a tuff islet stretching out into the gulf, between Santa Lucia and Chiaia. Facing Via Partenope, its profile on the sea is one of the elements that stand out in the panorama of the...
The Teatro San Carlo is the great opera house of Naples, next to the Royal Palace, between Via San Carlo and Piazza Trieste e Trento. It opened in 1737 and is the oldest opera house in the world still in operation. Inside, the horseshoe-shaped...
The Certosa di San Martino is a great Baroque monastery on the Vomero hill, beside Castel Sant'Elmo. It has about a hundred rooms, two churches, three cloisters and hanging gardens with a view over the whole gulf. Since 1866 it has also housed...
Castel Sant'Elmo is the star-shaped fortress that can be seen from almost anywhere in the city, on the Vomero hill, 250 meters above the sea. It is the largest castle in Naples and is largely carved out of the yellow tuff. From here you look over...
Spaccanapoli is the ruler-straight street that splits the old center of Naples in two, north from south. It does not have a single name: it changes from Via Pasquale Scura to Via Benedetto Croce to Via San Biagio dei Librai. It is the lower...
Piazza del Plebiscito is the great square of Naples, at the end of Via Toledo, between the seafront and the historic center. At about 25,000 square meters it is one of the largest in the city and in Italy, which is why concerts and big events are...
The San Martino National Museum stands inside the Certosa di San Martino, on the Vomero hill, and tells the history and life of Naples and its Kingdom. There are nativity scenes, carriages, ships, views of the city, paintings and porcelain, in...
The Sansevero Chapel, or church of Santa Maria della Pietà, is a small Baroque temple a short walk from Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, in the historic center of Naples.
Today it is a museum, and one of the most visited in the city: you come...
The church of the Gesù Nuovo is a great Baroque church in Naples, in Piazza del Gesù Nuovo, opposite the Basilica of Santa Chiara and the obelisk of the Immaculate Conception. From outside it looks like a palace, and in fact it was one: the...
The Catacombs of San Gennaro are a vast underground cemetery dug into the tuff of Capodimonte hill, in Naples, between the 2nd and 3rd centuries. They are the city's most important Christian monument and a journey into Naples in its earliest...
The San Gregorio Armeno complex is a Baroque church with its large monastery, in the old center of Naples, halfway along the street of the nativity-scene craftsmen. Behind a sober facade it hides one of the richest, most gilded interiors in the...
The Basilica of San Francesco di Paola closes Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples like a great embrace of columns, facing the Royal Palace. It is one of the main examples of Neoclassical architecture in Italy, with a dome reminiscent of the...
The Cloister of San Gregorio Armeno is the secret garden of the nuns of the monastery of the same name, in the historic center of Naples. For centuries it was closed to the city: today it is a quiet corner with orange trees and lookout terraces,...
The Basilica of San Domenico Maggiore stands in the square of the same name, in the heart of Naples' lower decumanus. Gothic, vast and full of noble chapels, it was the mother house of the Dominicans in the Kingdom of Naples and the church of the...
The Pio Monte della Misericordia is a charitable institution founded in Naples in 1602, housed in a 17th-century palace on the main decumanus, next to the Cathedral. It holds one of Caravaggio's most famous works, and still helps those in need...
Castel Capuano is, after Castel dell'Ovo, the oldest castle in Naples. Of Norman origin, it stands at the end of via dei Tribunali, next to Porta Capuana, the gate from which the road to ancient Capua began.
The castle was born in 1160 at...
Napoli Sotterranea (Underground Naples) is the network of tunnels, galleries, cisterns and aqueducts dug into the tuff beneath the city, partly still open to visit. A very well-known entrance for guided tours is in Piazza San Gaetano, in the...
The Archaeological Area of the Santa Chiara complex is a Roman bath complex hidden beneath the monastery, in the historic center of Naples. It is visited together with the Museo dell'Opera, and shows how people lived two thousand years...
Posillipo is a residential district on the hill that closes the Gulf of Naples to the west. Villas, sea cliffs and views over the gulf make it the place where Neapolitans go in search of a panorama.
The name comes from the Greek...
The Decumanus Maximus, via dei Tribunali, is the most important street in the old center of Naples: a long straight line packed with churches and palaces, where you walk along the same track the Greeks followed.
The name «decumanus» is...
The Archaeological Area of San Lorenzo Maggiore is a piece of ancient Naples hidden beneath the basilica and the convent, in Piazza San Gaetano. It shows a Roman street with the shops still in their places.
About ten meters below street...
Piazza Trieste e Trento is one of the hubs of central Naples: via Toledo, via Chiaia and via San Carlo converge here, and it is the main access to Piazza del Plebiscito. It is a concentrate of Naples in a single glance.
Around the square...
The Cloister of San Lorenzo Maggiore is one of the monumental cloisters of Naples, in the convent next to the basilica, at number 36 via dei Tribunali. A pause of silence in the historic center, with layers of history beneath and around...
The Museo dell'Opera di Santa Chiara tells the story of one of Naples' great Gothic complexes, inside the 14th-century monastery of Santa Chiara: you visit it together with the famous majolica cloister, on the same route.
The highlight is...
The Cloisters of San Martino are part of the Certosa di San Martino, on the Vomero hill, with all of Naples at its feet. The largest is a portico of white and gray marble, among statues of saints and the monks' little cemetery.
The Great...
The church of Sant'Angelo a Nilo, also known as the Brancaccio Chapel, is a small church in Naples' historic center, on Piazzetta Nilo, a stone's throw from Spaccanapoli and Piazza San Domenico Maggiore. From the outside it looks like very...
The Basilica of San Paolo Maggiore is a large Baroque church in Piazza San Gaetano, in the ancient center of Naples. You spot it right away: on its facade it still has two Corinthian columns from the Roman temple it was built on.
The...
The Obelisco dell'Immacolata is the 22-meter Baroque marble spire in the middle of Piazza del Gesù Nuovo, in Naples, in front of the church of the same name: the youngest of the city's three great spires.
It looks like the festival...
The church of San Giovanni a Carbonara stands in the historic center of Naples, in the San Lorenzo district. Founded in the fourteenth century, it has interiors that are almost all sixteenth-century: for sculpture and painting it is one of the...
The Botanical Garden of Naples, also called the Real Orto botanico, is a scientific garden of the Federico II University covering about 12 hectares, on Via Foria, in the center of the city. It holds about 9,000 plant species and almost 25,000...
The Cloisters of Santa Chiara are four monumental cloisters in the monastery of the basilica of Santa Chiara, in the historic center of Naples. The most famous is the majolica cloister, a garden of colored tiles.
The majolica cloister, or...
The Capodimonte Park, or Real Bosco, is Naples' great green lung: 124 hectares of woods, avenues and gardens on the hill around the palace that houses the Capodimonte museum, with views over the gulf and Vesuvius.
Born as a Bourbon hunting...
Piazza del Mercato is the large paved square of the Pendino district, in Naples, a stone's throw from the Basilica of Santa Maria del Carmine: for centuries the city's main market and the place of public executions, today a wide and somewhat...