This massive Gothic edifice was built from 1289 to 1324 and then was rebuilt in the Renaissance and early baroque eras.

You enter from under the apse end, where you'll see that the body of the church was overhauled in neo-Gothic style in the 1850s. Walk down the left aisle (which is on your right because you're coming in from the wrong end) to the last chapel, where you'll find Luca Giordano's Crowning of St. Joseph. Now turn around to attack the church from the proper direction.

The first chapel on the right aisle is a Renaissance masterpiece of design and sculpture by Tuscans Antonio and Romolo da Settignano.

The third chapel on the right contains frescoes from 1309 by Roman master Pietro Cavallini (a contemporary of Giotto).

The seventh chapel on the right is the Crucifixion Chapel (Cappella del Crocifisso), with some Renaissance tombs and a copy of the 12th-century Crucifixion painting that spoke to St. Thomas Aquinas.

Next door, the theatrical Sacristy has a ceiling fresco by Francesco Solimena (1706) and small caskets containing the ashes of Aragonese rulers and courtiers, lining a high shelf. What acts like a right transept was actually a preexisting church grafted onto this one, the Chiesa Antica di Sant'Angelo a Morfisa, today an oversize chapel containing lots of finely carved Renaissance tombs.

On Piazza San Domenico is another of Naples's baroque spires, this one a 1737 confection called the Guglia di San Domenico by Domenico Antonio Vaccaro.

Open Hours

Daily 7:30am-noon and 5-7pm

Prices

Free admission

Transportation

Bus: 24, 42, E1, R1, R3, or R4