Napoli
77 places
Sacred artCappella Sansevero (Cristo Velato)
Napoli (NA)
Beneath a veil of marble that still seems to breathe, Sanmartino's Cristo Velato rests in the chapel's half-light, and the whiteness of the stone deceives every eye.
Sacred artDuomo di Napoli
Napoli
Three times a year the city holds its breath as the blood of San Gennaro waits to liquefy, among Gothic naves and the gold of the chapel devoted to him.
Sacred artCappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro
Napoli
Behind a bronze gate lie silverware, gems and the jewel-studded mitre of the saint: a treasure heaped up over centuries by the devotion of Naples.
Sacred artChiesa del Gesù Nuovo
Napoli
The facade of pyramid-cut piperno stone hides symbols carved into the blocks, while inside the Baroque bursts out in marble and in the memory of the physician Giuseppe Moscati.
Sacred artChiostro di Santa Chiara
Napoli
A garden of pillars clad in yellow and blue majolica, where lemon pergolas and eighteenth-century scenes painted on the tiles keep the noise of the city at bay.
◆ Sacred artChiesa di Santa Luciella ai Librai (teschio con le orecchie)
Napoli
In the crypt of a small church rediscovered in the maze of the Librai rests the skull with ears, which the faithful believed could listen to their prayers.
Sacred artSan Gregorio Armeno
Napoli
The street of the presepe (nativity scene) masters, where terracotta shepherds are shaped all year round and the alley smells of glue and wood beneath Baroque bell towers.
◆ Sacred artSan Giovanni a Carbonara
Napoli
A double forceps-shaped flight of stairs leads up to the church, inside which the monumental tomb of King Ladislao rises like a tower of marble.
◆ History & archaeologyPort'Alba
Napoli
A seventeenth-century arch cut into the walls leads to the booksellers' street, where stalls of second-hand volumes pile up among yellowed pages and the shade of the old city.
Street artMurales di Maradona
Napoli (NA)
In the Quartieri Spagnoli a giant mural of Maradona has turned a courtyard into a secular shrine, among scarves, votive candles and fans on pilgrimage.
History & archaeologyNapoli Sotterranea
Napoli (NA)
Forty metres beneath the alleys, Greek quarries and Roman cisterns turned into shelters during the war: another Naples carved into the tufo (volcanic tuff), dark and cool.
History & archaeologyStadio Diego Armando Maradona
Napoli (NA)
At Fuorigrotta the old San Paolo now bears the name of Maradona: on match nights the whole city seems to hold its breath.
Sacred artCatacombe di San Gennaro
Napoli (NA)
In the Sanità district open two levels of frescoed galleries where San Gennaro was buried, the largest catacomba in the South carved into the yellow tufo (volcanic tuff).
Views & panoramasPalazzo dello Spagnolo
Napoli (NA)
In the Sanità district the Palazzo dello Spagnolo opens its courtyard onto a double-ramp staircase, wings of stucco like a falcon's: baroque turned into stagecraft.
Street artStazione Toledo (Stazioni dell'Arte)
Napoli (NA)
Toledo station descends into the deep blue of the sea through Tusquets' 'Crater de luz', where the shimmering mosaics turn the metro into a plunge into water and light.
Street artStazione Università (Karim Rashid)
Napoli (NA)
Karim Rashid has turned Università station into a flash of magenta and fluid surfaces, futuristic geometries conceived as a hymn to knowledge and connection.
Street artStazione Materdei
Napoli (NA)
Materdei station weaves together natural light and coloured mosaics, bringing back to the surface the breath of a hillside neighbourhood often left off the usual itineraries.
Street artStazione Dante
Napoli (NA)
At Dante station contemporary art inhabits the daily passage, from Joseph Kosuth's neon to the works that accompany commuters between the piazza and the bowels of the city.
MuseumsMuseo di Capodimonte
Napoli (NA)
In the Bourbon palace set within a monumental wood, Capodimonte holds Titian, Caravaggio and the Farnese collection, with the gulf appearing beyond the tree-lined avenues.
MuseumsMADRE — Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina
Napoli (NA)
In the Donnaregina palace the MADRE gathers contemporary art in Napoli, from the site-specific installations conceived for its rooms to the great names of the later twentieth century.
History & archaeologyPAN — Palazzo delle Arti Napoli
Napoli (NA)
At Palazzo Roccella, among the elegant streets of Chiaia, the PAN hosts exhibitions of art, photography and comics, a civic space where contemporary research meets the city.
MuseumsGallerie d'Italia — Palazzo del Banco di Napoli
Napoli (NA)
On via Toledo the Gallerie d'Italia hold Caravaggio's last canvas, the 'Martirio di sant'Orsola', painted in Napoli in the final months of his life.
Views & panoramasLe Vele di Scampia
Napoli (NA)
Le Vele di Scampia, enormous sail-shaped structures designed in the 1970s, remain a controversial icon of the Neapolitan periphery, between demolitions and the memory of redemption.
Views & panoramasMostra d'Oltremare
Napoli (NA)
Among the rationalist avenues of Fuorigrotta, geometric fountains and the Torre delle Nazioni sketch a suspended 1940s landscape, where architecture becomes the perfect stage set for the camera.
CastlesMaschio Angioino (Castel Nuovo)
Napoli (NA)
Its cylindrical towers watch over the port, while the triumphal arch of white marble is set into the dark stone like a doorway to the Renaissance.
CastlesCastel dell'Ovo
Napoli (NA)
On the little islet of Megaride, the oldest fortress in Naples reaches out over the sea, wrapped in the legend of the egg hidden by Virgil in its foundations.
CastlesCastel Sant'Elmo
Napoli (NA)
A star-shaped fortress on the Vomero hill, from its ramparts it offers the widest view over the city, the gulf and Vesuvius on the horizon.
Sacred artCertosa e Museo Nazionale di San Martino
Napoli (NA)
Beside Sant'Elmo, the Carthusian monastery weaves together marble cloisters and a sumptuous church, keeper of the most famous collection of Neapolitan presepi (nativity scenes).
In the water & divingParco della Gaiola
Napoli (NA)
Below Posillipo, two islets linked by a fragile bridge: the Gaiola marine protected area, with submerged Roman ruins, transparent waters and the whispered fame of a cursed island.
VolcanoesCratere degli Astroni
Napoli (NA)
An extinct crater enclosed by wooded walls, with small lakes and silent trails: once a Bourbon hunting reserve, today an oasis where the woodpecker marks the time.
History & archaeologyNeapolis Sotterrata (San Lorenzo Maggiore)
Napoli (NA)
Beneath the cloister you walk along a real Greco-Roman street: the macellum, the bakers' shops, the laundry. The Neapolis of the 1st century, frozen beneath your feet.
◆ Sacred artSanta Maria la Nova e la "tomba di Dracula"
Napoli (NA)
In the cloister stands a tomb with a dragon carved between two sphinxes. Since 2014 some swear that Vlad the Impaler lies inside, buried here by his daughter. Historians shake their heads. The dragon, though, is right there.
◆ Sacred artChiesa di Santa Maria del Pianto
Napoli (NA)
Built in 1657 over the mass graves of the plague that in a single year carried off half of Naples. Below lies the Grotta degli Sportiglioni: the tufo quarries where the plague victims were thrown by the thousand.
◆ CastlesPalazzo Serra di Cassano — il portone chiuso dal 1799
Napoli (NA)
On 20 August 1799 Gennaro Serra di Cassano was executed in Piazza Mercato for the Repubblica Napoletana. His father had the palace's monumental door barred. It has never been reopened since.
◆ CastlesPalazzo Penne — il patto col diavolo
Napoli (NA)
Antonio Penne wanted his palace built in a single night, and asked the devil for it in exchange for his soul. Then he cheated him with an impossible clause. The quills carved on the façade since 1406 are still there as a reminder.
◆ CastlesVilla Ebe e le Rampe Lamont Young
Napoli (NA)
Lamont Young dreamed of a Naples crossed by canals and underground railways. Nobody listened. In 1929 he shot himself inside this neo-Gothic castle built for his wife Ebe. In 2000 an arson fire devoured its interiors.
◆ CastlesCastello Aselmeyer
Napoli (NA)
A Tudor manor with turrets and mullioned windows, planted in the middle of Corso Vittorio Emanuele: Lamont Young's other English dream, built for British tourists who never came.
◆ CastlesTorre Palasciano
Napoli (NA)
A Florentine tower rising on the Capodimonte hill: it was wanted by Ferdinando Palasciano, the surgeon who cried "the wounded are sacred" and anticipated the Red Cross. They say his ghost still leans out to admire the bay.
◆ NaturePalazzo Venezia e il suo giardino segreto
Napoli (NA)
From 1412 to 1797 this was the embassy of the Republic of Venice in Naples. You step through the door on Spaccanapoli, climb a ramp and find yourself in a hanging garden carved into the tufo (volcanic tuff), with a little Pompeian pavilion and not a tourist in sight.
◆ Street artFontana della Sirena (Piazza Sannazaro)
Napoli (NA)
Rejected by Ulysses, the siren Partenope let herself die and the sea laid her on this shore: from her the city took its name. Here she is in marble, lyre in hand, on a rock of horses, lions and dolphins.
◆ Street artMurales di Jorit a Piscinola-Scampia (Pasolini, Angela Davis, De Andre')
Napoli (NA)
You come out of the metro and Pasolini is waiting for you, as tall as a building, next to Angela Davis and De André. Scampia told by those who live there, not by those who use it as a set.
◆ MuseumsMuseo Civico Gaetano Filangieri
Napoli (NA)
Armour, porcelain, paintings and the library of a collector prince, in a Renaissance palace that in the nineteenth century was taken apart stone by stone and rebuilt thirty metres further along.
MuseumsMuseo Duca di Martina — Villa Floridiana
Napoli (NA)
Six thousand pieces of decorative art — Meissen porcelain, ivories, corals — in a white villa built by a king for his morganatic wife, at the top of a park looking over the bay.
MuseumsVilla Pignatelli
Napoli (NA)
A neoclassical villa left exactly as it was: the halls, the library, the little red drawing room. And, in the annexe, the carriage museum — with the park all around, in the middle of Chiaia's traffic.
◆ MuseumsMuSA — Museo dell'Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte
Napoli (NA)
The first observatory of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with its nineteenth-century brass telescopes, on a terrace overlooking the whole of Naples. On some evenings you really do watch the stars.
◆ Sacred artChiostro di San Marcellino e Festo
Napoli (NA)
A monastic cloister open on one side — an extremely rare thing — that suddenly gives onto the roofs of Naples, the sea and Vesuvius. At its centre, a baroque fountain with dolphins. And it is free.
◆ HikingSalita del Petraio
Napoli (NA)
Five hundred steps dropping from the Vomero down to Chiaia along an ancient watercourse, among bassi (ground-floor homes), washing lines, cats and little gardens. At every turn the bay reappears, and there is not a single tourist.
◆ Views & panoramasParco Urbano ed Eremo dei Camaldoli
Napoli (NA)
The roof of Naples, 458 metres. From here, in a single glance: Vesuvius, the Campi Flegrei, Capri, Ischia, Procida and the Monti Lattari. Behind you, a hermitage of 1585 where nuns still live.
Views & panoramasPontile Nord di Bagnoli
Napoli (NA)
Nine hundred metres of concrete running out into the sea: it was the Italsider pier, where the steel was loaded. Today you walk out over the bay, with Nisida ahead and the chimneys behind. At sunset it feels unreal.
- ◆ Museums
Ospedale delle Bambole
Napoli
Behind a shop window in Palazzo Marigliano a craftsman mends glass eyes, porcelain arms and dolls' curls, in a workshop born more than a century ago.
- ◆ Sacred art
Complesso dei Girolamini
Napoli
Beyond the white facade open one of the oldest libraries in Naples and a silent picture gallery, among wooden shelves and canvases hung by the Oratorian fathers.
- Street art
Madonna con la pistola (Banksy)
Napoli (NA)
In piazza dei Girolamini, Banksy's Madonna wears a pistol in place of a halo, the street artist's only Neapolitan work, now protected behind glass.
- Museums
Museo Jago (Sant'Aspreno ai Crociferi)
Napoli (NA)
In a church of the old town Jago shows his marble sculptures, among them the Figlio Velato: the contemporary in dialogue with Neapolitan baroque.
- Street art
Murale Maradona-Pino Daniele-Troisi (Torre Enel)
Napoli (NA)
On the former Torre Enel of the Centro Direzionale, Jorit has raised vertically the faces of Maradona, Pino Daniele and Troisi: the Neapolitan trinity watching over the city from on high.
- Street art
Maradona 'Dios Umano' di Jorit
Napoli (NA)
In San Giovanni a Teduccio a colossal Maradona fills an entire suburban building, suspended between the divine and the human in the gaze Jorit painted for the neighbourhood.
- Street art
Parco dei Murales (Parco Merola)
Napoli (NA)
Among the tower blocks of Ponticelli, the courtyards of Parco Merola have become an open-air gallery, with tender figures and giant faces painted on the facades of the public housing.
- Street art
Murale di BLU all'ex OPG
Napoli (NA)
On the walls of the former judicial asylum of Materdei, today an occupied space, the huge figure signed BLU turns the memory of confinement into a gesture of collective redemption.
- Street art
Murale 'Totò e la Banda degli Onesti'
Napoli (NA)
Totò and Peppino De Filippo return to the walls of Napoli in the scene from 'La Banda degli Onesti', funny and tender, where a little cup of coffee becomes a lesson in life.
- Street art
Murales di Cyop&Kaf 'Quore Spinato'
Napoli (NA)
In the alleys of the Quartieri Spagnoli a great red heart girdled with barbed wire, signed Cyop&Kaf, tells without words the rough, stubborn love of this part of Napoli.
- Street art
Iside / Pudicizia di Bosoletti
Napoli (NA)
In the Quartieri Spagnoli Bosoletti rewrites in negative the veiled Pudicizia of the Sansevero: a woman's figure surfaces on the plaster, at once delicate and monumental.
- Views & panoramas
Casa del Portuale
Napoli (NA)
On the port of Napoli, Aldo Loris Rossi's Casa del Portuale rises like a concrete spaceship, brutalist architecture whose cylindrical pillars are inspired by the quayside silos.
- ◆ History & archaeology
Lanificio Borbonico
Napoli (NA)
Behind Porta Capuana, inside a former Renaissance convent, the old Bourbon factory that wove the uniforms of the Kingdom is reborn today as a space for art and craft.
- ◆ History & archaeology
LAPIS Museum — Acquedotto Augusteo del Serino
Napoli (NA)
Beneath the oldest basilica in Naples you descend into the aqueduct that Augustus had brought all the way here from the springs of Serino, and into the shelters where the city hid from the bombs.
- ◆ Museums
Museo del Sottosuolo
Napoli (NA)
Cisterns, tunnels and wells under Piazza Cavour, where the munaciello (little monk of Neapolitan lore) is not a fairy tale but the trade of those who worked down here: small, hooded, always in the shadows.
- ◆ Museums
MUSA — Museo di Anatomia Umana
Napoli (NA)
Skeletons, foetuses in formalin, bodies petrified with Giuseppe Aloe's nineteenth-century method. One of the most striking anatomical collections in Europe, inside a former monastery, and almost nobody knows it.
- ◆ Museums
Museo delle Arti Sanitarie e Farmacia degli Incurabili
Napoli (NA)
Surgical instruments that look like torture tools, the lazaretto ward, and the most beautiful eighteenth-century pharmacy in Europe: carved wood, majolica jars, and a poison jar with an inscription that chills you.
- ◆ Sacred art
Basilica di San Severo fuori le mura e il Figlio Velato di Jago
Napoli (NA)
In the chapel of the Bianchi, a marble child sleeps beneath a veil of stone: Jago's contemporary answer to the Cristo Velato, a stone's throw from the oldest catacombe (catacombs) in the city.
- ◆ Nature
Cimitero degli Inglesi (Santa Maria della Fede)
Napoli (NA)
The old non-Catholic cemetery of Naples, where the English, the Protestants and the foreigners without a church ended up. Closed in 1893, today it is a public garden where the gravestones surface among the trees.
- ◆ Street art
Murale di Maradona di Jorit (Taverna del Ferro)
Napoli (NA)
On the blind wall of a social-housing block, Maradona watches over the neighbourhood from above: a giant secular icon painted where the city ends and nobody expects beauty.
- ◆ Street art
Murale del Che Guevara di Jorit (San Giovanni a Teduccio)
Napoli (NA)
Che Guevara looks at Maradona from one end of the neighbourhood to the other, as tall as a building. Two secular saints on the social housing of San Giovanni.
- ◆ Museums
Museo Hermann Nitsch
Napoli (NA)
In a former power station: the blood-soaked canvases, the vestments and the instruments of Hermann Nitsch's Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries. This is not art for everyone: it is a rite.
- ◆ Museums
Il Cartastorie — Museo dell'Archivio del Banco di Napoli
Napoli (NA)
Eighty kilometres of shelving holding the records of the oldest banking archive in the world: inside are the payments to Caravaggio, the debts of noblemen, five centuries of Neapolitan lives. The pages light up and tell their stories.
- ◆ Museums
Musei universitari delle Scienze Naturali
Napoli (NA)
In the baroque halls of the Collegio dei Gesuiti: giant crystals donated by the Bourbons, whale skeletons hanging from the ceiling, skulls, mummies and foetuses in display cases. It costs about the price of one and a half coffees.
- ◆ Museums
Museo della Fondazione Nunziatella
Napoli (NA)
Inside the oldest military school in Italy, the eighteenth-century church is a jewel of marble and stucco that almost nobody sees — and from here came both the royalists and the revolutionaries of 1799.
- History & archaeology
Galleria Borbonica
Napoli (NA)
A tunnel commissioned by Ferdinand II as an escape route from the royal palace to the sea, then a wartime shelter and car depot: Bourbon Naples carved into the tuff.
- Street art
Stazione Municipio (Stazioni dell'Arte)
Napoli (NA)
The station-museum in Piazza Municipio, designed by Siza and Souto de Moura, incorporates the remains of the ancient harbour of Naples and five Roman ships found during the excavations.
- ◆ Nature
Real Bosco di Capodimonte
Napoli (NA)
The great historic park surrounding the palace-museum of Capodimonte: 130 hectares of avenues, clearings and woods where Neapolitans walk, run and get some air above the city. Free entry.