Things to do
10-
Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli
Where nearly everything portable from Pompeii and Herculaneum ended up, along with the Farnese marbles. The mosaics, the bronzes and the Secret Cabinet make it the single most important Roman collection anywhere.
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Naples Cathedral
Home of the vial of San Gennaro's blood, whose liquefaction three times a year is watched by the whole city. The fourth-century basilica of Santa Restituta survives inside the later building.
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Napoli Sotterranea
Forty metres under the old town, in Greek quarries that became Roman aqueducts and then wartime shelters. Some passages are narrow enough to be taken sideways by candle.
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Palazzo Reale di Napoli
The Bourbon royal palace on Piazza del Plebiscito, with the state apartments and a court theatre. The national library is in the same building.
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Cappella Sansevero
A small chapel holding the Veiled Christ, carved in 1753 from one block with a shroud that reads as cloth over stone. Entry is timed and the queue outside is constant.
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Castel dell'Ovo
The oldest fortification in Naples, on the islet where the Greeks first landed. It is free to walk up to the ramparts and the view runs from Vesuvius round to Posillipo.
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Catacombe di San Gennaro
Second-century burial galleries on two levels under Capodimonte, holding some of the earliest Christian painting in southern Italy. They are run by a cooperative of young people from the Sanita district.
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Certosa di San Martino
A Carthusian monastery on the Vomero ridge, now a museum of Neapolitan art and nativity scenes, with terraced gardens looking over the bay. It is reached by funicular.
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Museo di Capodimonte
The Farnese collection in a Bourbon hunting palace above the city: Titian, Caravaggio's Flagellation, Parmigianino, in a park that stays open free.
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Spaccanapoli
The dead straight Greco-Roman street that splits the old town, still the spine of daily life here. It is the walk that explains the city.