Explore Naples

The Ipogeo dei Cristallini is a group of four Greek chamber tombs from the late 4th and early 3rd centuries BC, about 12 metres below the Sanità district of Naples. Found in 1889 under the garden of the Palazzo Di Donato and opened to visitors in 2022, they keep carved and painted funeral couches, frescoed walls and a relief head of Medusa.

The Catacombs of San Gaudioso lie beneath the Basilica of Santa Maria della Sanità and grew around the tomb of Gaudiosus, a North African bishop buried here in the 5th century. Early Christian frescoes and mosaics survive, and in the 17th century the Dominicans buried nobles here, setting their skulls into wall paintings of their bodies.

The Catacombs of San Gennaro are early Christian burial grounds dug into the tuff of the Capodimonte hill from the 2nd century, on two levels. They contain the tomb where the remains of Saint Januarius were placed in the 5th century, frescoes from the 2nd to the 10th century and the Basilica of San Gennaro extra moenia. Visits are guided.

The Museo di Capodimonte occupies the Palace of Capodimonte, begun in 1738 for King Charles of Bourbon on the hill north of the old town, partly to house the Farnese collection he inherited from his mother. Opened in its present form in 1957, it shows Neapolitan and Italian painting, decorative arts and the royal apartments, inside a large wooded park.

The National Railway Museum of Pietrarsa occupies the Bourbon Pietrarsa works, founded in 1840 by Ferdinand II beside the Naples–Portici line, the first railway in Italy, opened in 1839. More than 55 historic locomotives and carriages stand in the old workshop pavilions by the sea, from a replica of the Bayard engine to electric trains.

Herculaneum is the Roman seaside town in today's Ercolano that a pyroclastic flow from Mount Vesuvius buried in AD 79; it was found in 1709 and dug regularly from 1738. The deep deposits carbonised and kept wooden roofs, beds and doors, and the excavated streets show houses with marble and mosaics, baths and the boat sheds where some 300 skeletons were found.