3 Best Sights in Centro Storico, Naples

The beautifully restored 17th-century Basilica di Pietrasanta, a Cosimo Fanzago Baroque masterpiece built on the site of the Roman Temple of Diana, hosts regular multimedia exhibitions, but the star attraction here is the underground visit to a section of Naples’s oldest aqueduct. Four tours a day descend 40 meters (131 feet) below the busy Via dei Tribunali to large lavishly illuminated cisterns hewed from excavated tuff two millennia ago, still filled with running water (thanks to a collaboration with the city’s waterworks).

In the courtyard of the 16th-century Palazzo Marigliano is this world-famous hospital for dolls, which has a small museum dedicated to its poignant mission. Doll limbs, eyes and well-cuddled, antique characters of all shapes and descriptions spill from packed shelves. In business since 1895, it's a wonderful place to take kids (and their injured toys) and for anyone who retains a childhood sense of wonder with a penchant for the uncanny.

Fascinating 90-minute tours of a portion of Naples's fabled underground city provide an initiation into the complex history of the city center. Efforts to dramatize the experience—amphoras lowered on ropes to draw water from cisterns, candles given to navigate narrow passages, objects shifted to reveal secret passages—combine with enthusiastic English-speaking guides to make this particularly exciting for older children. Be prepared on the underground tour to go up and down many steps and crouch in very narrow corridors.