Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, Naples

Naples Cathedral is the city’s main church, a Roman Catholic cathedral and the seat of its archbishop. The building before you is also widely known as the Cathedral of Saint Januarius, honouring Naples’s patron saint. Its architecture is Gothic, while the present façade carries a later Gothic revival treatment by Enrico Alvino.

Look at the carved portals and the layered stonework: they give the entrance a richly assembled appearance. Beneath this church, archaeology preserves the foundations of earlier Christian basilicas, along with traces of Greek and Roman Naples. The crypt gives access to remains linked with Santa Restituta, including a Greek wall associated with the temple of Apollo, part of a Roman aqueduct, and a Greek road laid on a slope.

Within the cathedral, the Royal Chapel of the Treasure of Saint Januarius gathers frescoes and altarpieces by artists including Domenichino, Giovanni Lanfranco, Massimo Stanzione, and Jusepe Ribera. Its most powerful tradition belongs to a vial containing the saint’s blood. The vial is displayed three times each year, on the first Saturday in May, 19 September, and 16 December, when the dried material usually liquefies. As local legend has it, failure of the liquefaction foretells disaster for Naples.