7 Best Sights in Centro Storico, Naples

Although this cathedral was established in the 1200s, the building you see was erected a century later and has since undergone radical changes—especially during the baroque period. Inside, ancient columns salvaged from pagan buildings rise to the 350-year-old richly decorated false wooden ceiling (the original Gothic ceiling is 6 meters higher). Off the left aisle, step down into the 4th-century church of Santa Restituta, which was incorporated into the cathedral. Though Santa Restituta was redecorated in the late 1600s in the prevalent baroque style, the Battistero (Baptistery) is the oldest in the Western world, with what some claim to be the most beautiful mosaics in Italy.

On the right aisle of the cathedral, in the Cappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro, multicolor marbles and frescoes honor St. Januarius, the miracle-working patron saint of Naples, whose altar and relics are encased in silver. Three times a year—on September 19 (his feast day); on the Saturday preceding the first Sunday in May, which commemorates the transfer of his relics to Naples; and on December 16—his dried blood, contained in two sealed vials, is believed to liquefy during rites in his honor; the rare occasions on which it does not liquefy portend ill, as in 1980, the year of the Irpinia earthquake.

The most spectacular painting on display is Ribera's San Gennaro in the Furnace (1647), depicting the saint emerging unscathed from the furnace while his persecutors scatter in disarray. These days large numbers of devout Neapolitans offer up prayers in his memory. The Museo del Tesoro di San Gennaro houses a rich collection of treasures associated with the saint. Paintings by Solimena and Luca Giordano hang alongside statues, busts, candelabras, and tabernacles in gold, silver, and marble by Cosimo Fanzago and other 18th-century baroque masters.

A stunning architectural contrast to the plain Romanesque frontage of other nearby churches, the strikingly austere, recently restored (2023) stone facade of this elaborate Baroque church dates to the late 16th century. Originally a palace, the building was seized by Pedro of Toledo in 1547 and sold to the Jesuits with the condition that the facade remain intact. Behind the entrance is Francesco Solimena’s action-packed Heliodorus’ Eviction from the Temple. You can find the work of familiar Baroque sculptors (Naccherino, Finelli) and painters inside. The gracious Visitation above the altar in the second chapel on the right is by Massimo Stanzione, who also contributed the fine frescoes in the main nave: they're in the presbytery (behind and around the main altar).

Every day at 7:30 am (and 9:30 am on Sunday), the Perpetue Adoratrici (Sacramentine nuns) beautifully sing early Mass beneath Francesco de Mura's The Paradise, inside this late-17th-century church. Dressed in immaculate white and red habits, the nuns, at the end of the celebration, prostrate themselves before the altar, which stretches upward with layer after Baroque layer of Dionisio Lazzari's sumptuous gold and marble (1686), topped by the putti and the figures of Hope and Charity by Matteo Bottigliero (1733). Upon entering or exiting, take note of San Giuseppe dei Ruffi's dramatically Baroque facade, designed, as was the interior, by Lazzari, a renowned architect and sculptor. Hearing the nuns sing is a unique, if little known, Naples experience, and well worth rising early for.

One of the city's oldest and most important convents is set on Via San Gregorio Armeno—the street lined with Naples's most adorable Presepi—and is landmarked by a picturesque campanile. The nuns who lived here, often the daughters of Naples' richest families, must have been disappointed with Heaven when they arrived there, as the banquets held here rivaled those of the royal court, hallways were lined with paintings, and the church was filled with gilt stucco and semiprecious stones.

Designed by Niccolò Tagliacozzi Canale, the church has an interior that was described as "a room of Paradise on Earth" by Carlo Celano thanks to its highly detailed wooden ceiling, uniquely decorated choir lofts, shimmering organs, and illuminated shrines. It also has important Luca Giordano frescoes depicting scenes from the life of St. Gregory, whose relics were brought to Naples in the 8th century from Byzantium.

The restored Baroque fountain, with Matteo Bottiglieri's 17th-century Christ and the Samaritan Woman statues, is in the center of the convent's cloister (entrance off the small square up the road). You can gain access from here to other areas—some with magnificently preserved 18th-century interiors—of the still-working convent, including the nuns' gallery, which is shielded by 18th-century jalousies and offers a different perspective of the church.

Erected in the 16th century atop a previous church, this building has evolved many times—from the church of San Severo into a private palace, a monastery later suppressed by Napoleon, a state archive, a World War II bomb shelter, and an earthquake-damaged relic—before a long and painstaking renovation restored its luster. To the right of the nave, high above a door, rests the tomb of Charles V's general—and original church benefactor—Giovanni Bisvallo.

In addition to its aesthetic highlights, the complex also provides a telling lesson on mortality. Aboveground one can view the grandeur of monuments to the dead. Less grandly, a brief excursion downstairs reveals the scolatoi; these are draining holes where the recently deceased, seated upright and left to be drained of bodily fluids, were visited daily by Dominican monks seeking to reinforce their sense of the fragility of human existence.

Amid this church's graceful interior is the earliest evidence of the Renaissance in Naples: the funerary monument (1426–27) of Sant'Angelo's builder, Cardinal Brancaccio, sculpted by the famous Donatello and the almost-as-famous Michelozzo. The front of the sarcophagus bears Donatello's contribution, a bas-relief Assumption of the Virgin; upheld by angels, the Virgin seeming to float in air. Built in the late 1300s, the church was redesigned in the 16th century by Arcangelo Guglielmelli.

This Baroque church in a basic Latin-cross style with a single nave shares the piazza with a contemporary art school in a typically anarchic Neapolitan mix. The church, designed by the architect Francesco Grimaldi for the Theatin fathers and erected between 1610 and 1649, replaced a previous church, itself constructed on the remains of a temple probably dedicated to Mercury.

Santi Apostoli is worth a quick peek for its coherent, intact Baroque decorative scheme. Excellent paintings (circa 1644) by Giovanni Lanfranco each narrate a different martyrdom, and there are works by his successors, Francesco Solimena and Luca Giordano. An altar in the left transept by Francesco Borromini is the only work in Naples by this noted architect whose freedom from formality so inspired the exuberance of the Baroque.