San Lorenzo Maggiore, Naples

San Lorenzo Maggiore, Naples tickets: which one to buy

The church is free. The ticket, which is modest, covers the excavations beneath it and the museum on three floors above the cloister, and it is the reason to come: below the church lies half of the Roman market of Neapolis, an unusually complete street of shops, and the museum explains the site from Greek foundation to the present. Audio guides are included in some versions.

Walking tours of underground Naples include San Lorenzo and cost several times the ticket. The church is at the exact centre of the Greek and Roman city, where Via San Gregorio Armeno crosses Via dei Tribunali, five minutes from the cathedral. Nothing needs booking outside Christmas, when the nativity-figure workshops on the street beside it make the area impassable. Tickets are sold in the cloister to the left of the church door rather than inside the nave.

Visiting San Lorenzo Maggiore, Naples: what to see

Franciscans built the church from 1235 after Charles I of Anjou took their earlier site for his fortress, and the apse, with its ring of chapels and tall lancets, is French Gothic of the purest kind, unlike anything else in southern Italy. The nave was given a baroque skin in the seventeenth century and partly stripped again in the twentieth, so the two styles now sit side by side. Boccaccio is said to have first seen his Fiammetta in this church in 1334, and Petrarch stayed in the convent.

Below, the excavations expose a paved Roman street with a bakery, a laundry and a treasury, arcaded and roofed, walkable end to end; the level is about ten metres below the modern city, which gives a sharp sense of how Naples has risen on its own debris. The tomb of Catherine of Austria, carved by Tino di Camaino around 1323, stands in the apse and is among the finest Gothic monuments in Naples.

San Lorenzo Maggiore, Naples opening hours and the best time to go

The church opens daily from morning to evening with a break in the middle of the day; the excavations and museum keep shorter hours and close earlier, with the last entry well before that. The underground is cool and damp year-round and the floor is uneven. Naples is hot in July and August and this quarter has little shade. The street outside, Via San Gregorio Armeno, is the centre of the Neapolitan crib-making trade and is crowded from November to January.

Dress code applies to the church. Photography without flash is allowed. Allow ninety minutes for everything. The Duomo and the Sansevero chapel are both within five minutes. Via dei Tribunali outside is the old decumanus and holds several of the best pizzerias in the city. The excavations are entered from the cloister and the route below ground is about 150 metres long, lit throughout.