Explorer Naples

San Francesco di Paola is a basilica on the west side of Piazza del Plebiscito, built in 1816–1846 to designs by Pietro Bianchi and modelled on the Pantheon in Rome. A portico of six columns stands before the round church and its 53-metre dome, flanked by the curved colonnade planned under Joachim Murat.

Sant'Anna dei Lombardi is a church and former Olivetan monastery on Piazza Monteoliveto in Naples, founded in 1411 as Santa Maria di Monteoliveto. The visit covers Renaissance chapels with Tuscan sculpture, the sacristy painted by Giorgio Vasari, Guido Mazzoni's terracotta Lamentation over the Dead Christ and the crypt of the abbots.

The Monastery of Santa Chiara was founded in 1310 by King Robert of Anjou and Queen Sancha of Majorca beside the Gothic church of Santa Chiara. Its cloister was redesigned by Domenico Antonio Vaccaro in 1739–1742 with pillars and benches covered in painted majolica tiles, and the museum shows Roman baths excavated on the site and an 18th-century nativity scene.

Gesù Nuovo is a Jesuit church on Piazza del Gesù Nuovo, built in 1584–1601 by Giuseppe Valeriano inside the palace that Roberto Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, had built in 1470. It kept the palace's façade of grey piperno stone cut into diamond-shaped points; inside are coloured marble chapels and frescoes by Francesco Solimena.

San Lorenzo Maggiore is a Franciscan church begun in the late 13th century at the centre of the ancient Greek and Roman city, with a Gothic apse and an 18th-century facade. Beneath the cloister, excavations show a paved street of Roman Neapolis lined with shops and the market hall, and the museum in the convent covers the history of the site.

The Pio Monte della Misericordia is a charitable institution founded in 1601 by seven Neapolitan noblemen, with an octagonal church and a palace on Via dei Tribunali rebuilt by Francesco Antonio Picchiati from 1658. Caravaggio's Seven Works of Mercy hangs above the high altar, and the picture gallery upstairs shows paintings by Luca Giordano and others.

Naples Cathedral is the seat of the Archbishop of Naples, a Gothic church begun under Charles I of Anjou and completed in the early 14th century; its façade was reworked in neo-Gothic style in the late 19th century. Inside are the Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro, the early Christian basilica of Santa Restituta and a 4th-century baptistery.