Book the Naples museum Book now
Naples is not visited in geographical order but in calendar order, and that is the thing this list wants to tell you before anything else: three of its major museums close on the same day, Wednesday, and the Maschio Angioino closes on Sunday. Here you will find the guides to the museums that take half a day, the pieces on the places of the old centre, the city dug out beneath your feet and the itinerary that holds the two days together.
3 articles
Start here
If this is your first time in Naples, begin with these three. The first sets out the two days along with the closing days, which here decide the order more than distance does. The second is the painting you do not skip, the Caravaggio of the Pio Monte, still on the altar it was painted for. The third is the street of the nativity workshops, which is a trade and not a souvenir, and behind the shops it hides a convent with one of the finest cloisters in the old centre.
Travel guides · Europa
What to see in Naples in 2 days: the itinerary that holds the old centre and the hill together
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3 articles
The big museums
Three collections that each take half a day and that resemble one another not at all: the Archaeological Museum holds what Vesuvius buried, Capodimonte the Bourbon picture gallery inside a wood, the Certosa di San Martino Neapolitan Baroque with the bay through the windows. The Certosa costs six euros and closes on Wednesdays, and it is the ticket that pays back most in this city.
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Certosa e Museo di San Martino: the most famous nativity scene in the world sits in the old kitchens
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The works worth the journey
Two canvases and a relief, and in all three cases where they are matters. The Seven Works of Mercy is the only one of the three Neapolitan Caravaggios still on the altar it was painted for. The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula is his last work, delivered in May 1610 and recognised as his only in 1980. Donatello’s Assumption of the Virgin sits on a tomb carved in Pisa and shipped to Naples by sea in 1428, in a church where you will almost never find anybody.
Museums & masterpieces · Europa
The Seven Works of Mercy: the Caravaggio that was declared unsellable in 1613
11 min read Museums & masterpieces · Europa
The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula: the last Caravaggio, credited to another painter for two centuries
11 min read Monuments & landmarks · Europa
Spaccanapoli: Gesù Nuovo, San Domenico Maggiore and the Donatello almost nobody looks for
12 min read 3 articles
The old centre
Three places five minutes apart on foot, on the Greek decumani that are still the main streets. The Veiled Christ and the majolica cloister are the two things everybody photographs and also the two most misunderstood: the first was not carved by an alchemist, the second is not medieval but eighteenth century. The treasure of San Gennaro earns its place as the third stop, and it is richer than you expect.
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Sammartino’s Veiled Christ: how you carve a veil in marble
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Santa Chiara in Naples: the majolica cloister is not medieval, and the basilica you walk into dates from 1953
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Power on the waterfront
The Royal Palace and Castel Nuovo face each other five minutes apart and tell two different ways of ruling Naples: one is a piece of scenery begun in 1600 for a Spanish king who never came, the other an Angevin fortress into which an Aragonese king had a white marble triumphal arch wedged. Mind the days, because they are opposites: the palace closes on Wednesdays, the castle on Sundays.
3 articles
The city beneath the city
Naples is built of the tufa quarried from underneath itself, and the void stayed where it was. Beneath the old centre run the cisterns of the Greco-Roman aqueduct, turned into air-raid shelters in 1943; beneath the Rione Sanità lie the largest Christian catacombs in the south; beneath the hill of Pizzofalcone runs the Bourbon Tunnel, dug in 1853 for Ferdinand II as a military escape route. The first two have no weekly closing day and save a Wednesday; the third opens only from Friday to Sunday, and by booking.
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Underground Naples: the Greco-Roman aqueduct, the wartime shelters and the Roman theatre inside a ground-floor flat
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Contemporary art, commissioned
In Naples contemporary art was not bought, it was ordered for the place it occupies. The art stations of line 1 carry more than two hundred works designed for a platform or a light well, and you see them on a public transport ticket. The Madre opened in 2005 by commissioning twelve rooms from twelve artists, and those rooms are the part of the museum you will find unchanged in any month.
Exhibitions on now in Naples
All the guides to Naples- closes in 5 days Emilio Isgrò. Canto Napoli Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte
- closes in 18 days Maria Lai. Essere è tessere Madre - Museo d’arte contemporanea Donnaregina