Naples Cathedral

Naples Cathedral tickets: which one to buy

The cathedral is free to enter. What costs money is the layered archaeology and the treasury: a ticket covers the excavations beneath the neighbouring basilica of Santa Restituta, where Greek walls, a Roman road and a fourth-century baptistery lie beneath the floor, and a separate ticket covers the Museum of the Treasure of San Gennaro, which holds a collection of silver, gold and jewels that has been called richer than the English crown jewels.

The rooftop visit, which takes small groups onto the terraces for a view over five hundred domes of the old town, is a newer product sold by a single operator and needs booking. Walking tours of the historic centre usually include the cathedral and cost several times the sum of these tickets. The building sits on Via Duomo, five minutes from the Spaccanapoli street, and there is rarely a queue for the church itself. The cathedral shares a ticket office with the Santa Restituta excavations, tucked in the left aisle, and the treasury museum is entered from the square outside.

Visiting Naples Cathedral: what to see

Charles I of Anjou commissioned the cathedral in the 1270s on the foundations of two earlier basilicas, and the building swallowed them rather than replacing them: Santa Restituta survives as a side chapel with its own aisles, and below that are Greek and Roman remains. The nave is Gothic under a coffered seventeenth-century ceiling, with a hundred columns of granite salvaged from Roman temples. The real centre is the Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro, a domed baroque room frescoed by Domenichino and Lanfranco and closed by a bronze gate, where the blood of the city's patron saint is kept in two sealed phials.

Three times a year the archbishop displays them and the congregation waits for the dried blood to liquefy; the ritual is followed by the whole city and the failure of the miracle is taken seriously. The Minutolo Chapel keeps fourteenth-century frescoes and appears in Boccaccio's Decameron. A second, silver bust of San Gennaro is carried in procession through the old town on the feast day, escorted by the descendants of the families who have guarded the treasure since 1527.

Naples Cathedral opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily with a long midday closure in the traditional Neapolitan pattern, reopening in the late afternoon; the excavations and the treasury museum keep shorter and different hours, so check all three before planning. The blood is displayed on 19 September, the saint's feast day, on the Saturday before the first Sunday in May and on 16 December, and the cathedral is impassable on those days. Naples is hot in summer and the cathedral is cool and dim.

Dress code is enforced, shoulders and knees covered. Photography without flash is allowed in the nave but not in the treasure chapel. Allow forty minutes for the church, ninety with the excavations and the museum. The surrounding streets hold the best pizza in the city, which is a reason to time the visit around lunch. The Rione Sanita quarter behind the cathedral has its own catacombs and is best visited with a local guide on the same morning.