Naples is a city you can walk with surprising ease, and which then hands you the bill uphill. The old centre sits inside a Greek grid barely more than a kilometre across, where distances are measured in minutes and the only problem is choosing which doorway to go through. The two largest museums, though, are on the hill, and getting to them takes a funicular or a bus.
That difference in altitude is the first thing that decides a two-day itinerary. The second, less obvious and far more treacherous, is the calendar: in Naples the closing days of the monuments do not coincide, and anyone who fails to check them first risks finding the shutter down in front of the stop they had built the day around.
This guide keeps the old centre in the first day and the hill in the second, because that is the order that wastes the least time in transit. All the practical figures are at the end, in a single place, with the date on which I checked them.
The calendar before the map: which days to avoid
Here is the thing to know before you book the train. On Tuesday three stops on this itinerary close together: the Sansevero Chapel, the Certosa di San Martino and the National Archaeological Museum. On Wednesday Capodimonte closes. The cathedral, the Pio Monte della Misericordia and Santa Chiara stay open every day.
A simple rule follows. If your two days fall on a Tuesday and a Wednesday, this itinerary does not work as written: Tuesday leaves Sansevero, the Certosa and the Archaeological Museum shut, Wednesday leaves Capodimonte shut. You then have to replace a stop or add half a day, not merely reshuffle the order of the visits.
There is also a timing constraint that does not depend on the day. At the Sansevero Chapel booking is compulsory for everyone, with no exceptions, and the chapel holds few people at a time: it is the one fixed appointment of the two days, and it is worth fixing first and building the rest around it.
Day 1, morning: Spaccanapoli and the Sansevero Chapel
The first day begins where the Greeks traced the lower decumanus, the street everyone now calls Spaccanapoli and which changes name three times on the map: via Benedetto Croce, via San Biagio dei Librai, via Vicaria Vecchia. It is a straight cut across the centre from west to east, and walking the whole of it takes twenty minutes and half a day, depending on how often you stop.
From piazza San Domenico Maggiore a very short alley leads to the Sansevero Chapel. Inside, in a room that is not large, stands the Veiled Christ by Giuseppe Sammartino, carved in 1753 from a single block of marble: the veil clinging to the body is the same stone as the body, and the sense of wet cloth is achieved by polishing alone. Around it stand the Disillusion by Francesco Queirolo, with its net of loose marble mesh, and the Modesty by Antonio Corradini.
I have given the chapel an article of its own, because it deserves to be looked at knowing what to seek and because the legend that circulates about its patron is false: you will find it in The Sansevero Chapel and the Veiled Christ.
Day 1: the cathedral, the treasure of San Gennaro and fifth-century mosaics
Walking up towards via Duomo you reach the cathedral, and here entry is free. The surprise is that inside one church you find two more: the basilica of Santa Restituta, which was an independent church before being absorbed, and the baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte, whose mosaics of the late fourth century make it the oldest surviving early Christian baptistery in the West.
The Royal Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro is free to enter, but it has been run since 1601 by a deputation of laymen rather than by the diocese. Under the dome frescoed by Domenichino sits one of the richest collections of silver and jewellery in Europe, assembled over seven centuries of donations; seeing the museum and the sacristies, on the other hand, requires a ticket.
The practical detail to remember is precisely that difference between chapel and museum, and it is why I wrote a guide devoted to the complex: Naples cathedral and the treasure of San Gennaro.
Day 1, afternoon: Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy
A hundred metres from the cathedral, in via dei Tribunali, stands the Pio Monte della Misericordia, a charitable institution founded in 1602 and still active. On the altar of its octagonal church hangs one of the densest pictures Caravaggio ever painted, the Seven Works of Mercy, commissioned in 1606 during his first Neapolitan stay.
It is worth knowing what you are looking at, because the canvas does something unusual: instead of seven separate scenes, Caravaggio compresses all the corporal works of mercy into a single nocturnal space, and overlaps two of them in the same figure. The young woman suckling the old man through the bars is visiting the prisoner and feeding the hungry in the very same gesture. It is the invention of a director, not of an illustrator.
The picture has never left the wall it was painted for, and that is a rarity: almost every Neapolitan Caravaggio has changed location at least once.
Day 1, closing: the majolica cloister of Santa Chiara
The first day ends back towards Spaccanapoli, in the monumental complex of Santa Chiara. The church can be visited free of charge and keeps its own hours, separate from those of the complex; the cloister, on the other hand, is ticketed, and it earns the visit.
The Poor Clares’ cloister was redesigned in the eighteenth century by Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, who made a choice contrary to every notion of monastic austerity: he clad the pillars and the benches in riggiole, painted majolica tiles, with festoons of lemons and vines, hunting scenes, grape harvests and everyday life. The result is an enclosed garden where the colour comes from ceramic rather than from flowers, and where sitting down is pleasant even in late August.
One curiosity: the riggiole tell nothing sacred. Across those benches file ladies in sedan chairs, hunters, peasants and masks from the commedia, which is to say the world the enclosed nuns were not allowed to see.
Day 2, morning: Capodimonte, and the rooms that close earlier
The second day climbs. Capodimonte is the palace Charles of Bourbon had built in 1738 to house the Farnese collection he had inherited from his mother, and it is today one of the most important picture galleries in Italy, set inside a park of a hundred and twenty hectares.
Here a warning is needed, and it is no detail: a substantial part of the museum is closed for rehanging, and the open floors keep different hours from one another. The first floor, with the Farnese Gallery, closes at 19.30. The second floor, with Neapolitan painting from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, closes at 17.00 on ordinary days. Room 62, which gathers the masterpieces and holds Caravaggio’s Flagellation, stays open until 19.30 even when the rest of its own floor has already shut.
In practice: if you arrive in the afternoon you lose most of the second floor but not the masterpieces room. Which works to look for and which room they are in is in Capodimonte museum: the works to look for.
Day 2, afternoon: the Certosa di San Martino and the view
From the hill of Capodimonte you move to the one at Vomero, and the stop is the Certosa di San Martino, founded in 1325 and turned between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries into one of the richest building sites of Neapolitan Baroque. Cosimo Fanzago, Giovanni Antonio Dosio, Battistello Caracciolo, Luca Giordano and Massimo Stanzione all worked here.
The museum occupies the monastic spaces and holds the section of Neapolitan nativity scenes, with the Cuciniello crib, which is why many people come. What interests me more is Dosio’s Great Cloister, a rectangle of white marble with a monks’ cemetery closed off by a balustrade of skulls carved by Fanzago: it is a memento mori set in a garden, and it works.
From the Belvedere terrace you see what you see in the photograph that opens this article. Next to the charterhouse stands Castel Sant’Elmo, and if you still have half an hour the parade ground at the top offers the full turn of the horizon.
What not to do
Three mistakes that cost time or an entire stop.
Putting Capodimonte and the Certosa in the same half day. They are two large collections on two different hills, and moving from one to the other needs a transfer. Two separate half days are tight, one single day is a sprint.
Counting on buying a Sansevero ticket at the door. Booking is compulsory, and the mid-morning band is the first to sell out. It is the only stop of the two days you can lose for a purely bureaucratic reason.
Assuming the treasure of San Gennaro keeps the cathedral’s hours. The chapel is free, but the museum has an entrance and a timetable of its own: anyone arriving late in the afternoon may find the cathedral open and the museum shut.
If you have a third day
The Rione Sanità is the choice I would recommend first, and not for geographical completeness: the catacombs of San Gennaro are the largest early Christian cemetery in southern Italy, and their visits are run by a cooperative from the neighbourhood. I have written about it in The Sacred Mile and the Rione Sanità.
If you would rather leave the city, the three classic directions are the Royal Palace of Caserta, the archaeological park of Paestum and the Amalfi Coast. For an island a little over an hour away there is Procida.
Practical information
Figures checked on 1 September 2026 on the official sites of the individual monuments. Museum prices and hours change more often than people think: before you leave, at least re-check the two stops that carry a booking constraint.
Tickets. The Sansevero Chapel costs 12 euros full, with reductions to 8 euros between 18 and 26 and to 6 euros between 10 and 17. Capodimonte costs 15 euros full, with the reduced rate at 2 euros for European Union citizens between 18 and 25. The Museum of the Treasure of San Gennaro costs 15 euros full and 11 reduced, audioguide included; the Royal Chapel, by contrast, is free to enter. The Pio Monte della Misericordia costs 10 euros full and 8 reduced, and gives access to the church with the Caravaggio and to the picture gallery. The Santa Chiara complex costs 7 euros full, 5 for students under 30 and over 65s, 4 for children between 7 and 17. The Certosa di San Martino costs 6 euros full, with the reduced rate at 2 euros for EU citizens between 18 and 25. Entry to the cathedral, to the church of Santa Chiara and to the baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte is free.
Hours. Sansevero Chapel: 9.00-19.00, closed on Tuesday, last entry at 18.30. Capodimonte: 8.30-19.30, closed on Wednesday, last entry at 18.30, with the second floor closing at 17.00 on ordinary days and room 62 staying open until 19.30. Pio Monte della Misericordia: 10.00-18.00 Monday to Saturday with last entry at 17.30, and 9.00-14.30 on Sunday. Santa Chiara, the complex: 9.30-17.00 Monday to Saturday and 10.00-14.00 on Sunday; the church keeps its own hours, 7.45-12.45 and 16.30-20.00. Certosa di San Martino: 8.30-18.30, closed on Tuesday, last entry at 17.30. Cathedral: for the free visit to the ancient areas, 9.30-17.00; Museum of the Treasure: every day 9.30-18.00, last entry at 17.00.
Free admission. In the state museums, that is Capodimonte and the Certosa di San Martino, entry is free for under 18s and the first Sunday of each month is free for everyone. At the Sansevero Chapel children up to 9 go in free.
Getting there. The old centre is a twenty-minute walk from Napoli Centrale station, or a ride on metro line 1 to Dante or Museo. Capodimonte takes a surface bus from the centre, because the hill is not served by the metro. For Vomero and the Certosa di San Martino there are three funiculars, and the handiest from the centre is the Montesanto, which arrives a few minutes from the complex.
How long. The Sansevero Chapel takes forty minutes, an hour with the audioguide. Capodimonte asks for at least two and a half hours for the open floors. The Certosa di San Martino runs between two and three hours, cribs included. The cathedral with the baptistery and Santa Restituta needs an hour, the treasure of San Gennaro another.
On combined tickets. If three or more museums are on the programme, it is worth doing the sums with the Naples Artecard, which covers the Archaeological Museum, Capodimonte, the Royal Palace and the Certosa di San Martino and includes urban transport, funiculars included. One honest caveat: the pass lasts three days, so on two flat days it only pays off if you add Pompeii or a third day in the city.
Enjoy the visit, and if you can, keep Tuesday for travelling rather than for museums.
Photo credits: view from Castel Sant’Elmo by Wolfgang Moroder (CC BY-SA 3.0); via San Biagio dei Librai by Luca Aless (CC BY-SA 4.0); Veiled Christ by David Sivyer (CC BY-SA 2.0); Seven Works of Mercy by Giuseppe Guida (CC BY-SA 4.0); cloister of Santa Chiara by Sailko (CC BY 3.0); palace of Capodimonte by Mentnafunangann (CC BY-SA 4.0); Great Cloister of the Certosa di San Martino by Tremej (CC BY-SA 4.0); piazza San Domenico Maggiore and the cathedral facade in the public domain; Montesanto funicular by Mark Fischer (CC BY-SA 4.0); catacombs of San Gennaro by Dominik Matus (CC BY-SA 4.0); Castel Sant’Elmo by Wolfgang Moroder (CC BY-SA 3.0). All from Wikimedia Commons.
