3 Days in Naples: A First-Timer's Itinerary

Charles of Bourbon started this hilltop palace in 1738 as a hunting lodge and outgrew the plan. Inside sits the Farnese collection he inherited from his mother, plus Caravaggio's Flagellation of Christ and Titian's Danae. It's one of Italy's largest museums, and the least crowded of Naples' big three.

A curved 18th-century square wraps around a statue of Dante, with the Port'Alba gate, the city's old entrance, just steps away. It's a pause between the metro and Spaccanapoli, not a destination on its own.

Built between 1283 and 1324 for the Angevin kings, this is where Thomas Aquinas returned to teach theology in 1272. The sacristy above holds 45 sepulchres of Aragonese royals, including King Ferdinand I, mummified remains once dressed in their own 15th and 16th century clothes.

Giuseppe Sanmartino carved the Veiled Christ in 1753, and the marble shroud over the body still convinces first-time visitors it must be real fabric. The chapel's patron, Prince Raimondo di Sangro, also left two 'anatomical machines' downstairs, wax-and-wire figures with their vascular systems exposed.

Two Corinthian columns lean off the facade, all that survived an 1688 quake from a Roman temple to Castor and Pollux that once stood here. The church itself is 9th-century, built to mark a Neapolitan win over Saracen raiders.

The Gothic nave is worth a look, but the real draw is underground: half of Naples' Roman marketplace, excavated over 25 years and open to visitors since 1992. Boccaccio is said to have met his muse Fiammetta here in 1338, a detail that outlasts most of the Baroque side chapels.

Naples' cathedral takes its popular name from San Gennaro, the city's patron saint, whose dried blood is said to liquefy three times a year, including every 19 September. Beneath the nave, the older Basilica of Santa Restituta preserves a Greek wall from a temple to Apollo.

The diamond-cut stone facade looks defensive because it was: a private palace, built in 1470 for Roberto Sanseverino, before the Jesuits bought it in the 1580s and raised a church behind the same walls. Step inside for the contrast: a plain exterior hiding a gilded Baroque interior, decorated over the following century.

Queen Sancha of Majorca and King Robert of Naples founded this convent in 1313; Robert's tomb, carved in 1343, sits behind the altar. The real draw is the cloister out back: octagonal columns wrapped in majolica tiles, added in 1742 by Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, painted with lemons and everyday Naples life.

Naples' grand square took from 1809 to 1846 to finish, later named for the 1860 vote that folded the city into unified Italy. It's paved in dark Vesuvian volcanic rock, ringed by the curved colonnade of San Francesco di Paola on one side and the Royal Palace on the other.

Napoleon's brother-in-law Joachim Murat planned this as a secular monument to the emperor; after the Bourbons returned, Ferdinand I rededicated the finished building, built 1816 to 1846, to the Calabrian friar Francis of Paola instead. The circular interior, modeled openly on Rome's Pantheon, sits under a dome 53 meters high.

Domenico Fontana laid the first stone in 1600 for the Spanish viceroys, and the palace stayed in royal use through the Bourbons and briefly Joachim Murat. The eight statues filling the facade niches, one ruler per dynasty from Roger II to Victor Emmanuel II, were only added in 1888.

Opened in 1737, decades before La Scala or La Fenice, this is the oldest continuously active opera house in the world. The current house seats around 1,400, down from the 3,285 of the original hall.

Founded by the Jesuits in 1636 for Francis Xavier, this became a military order's church for Ferdinand III of Castile after the Jesuits were expelled in 1767, taking the reigning king's patron saint along with the change.

Built between 1887 and 1890 as the centerpiece of Naples' post-cholera risanamento, or 'making healthy again', this cross-shaped arcade carries a glass dome peaking at 57 meters. It mixed shops and cafes at street level with apartments upstairs, a 19th-century mixed-use building before the term existed.

Charles I of Anjou built this in just three years starting 1279, and Alfonso of Aragon added the triumphal arch between its towers in 1470, marking his 1443 conquest of the city. Ferdinand I once invited rebellious barons to a wedding here and arrested them; Pope Celestine V abdicated the papacy in 1294.

Naples' oldest castle sits on the site of a Roman villa built by Lucullus in the 1st century BC. Its name comes from a legend that Virgil buried a magic egg in the foundations to hold it up. It has the best free view of the bay on this route, no ticket needed.

Naturalist Anton Dohrn founded this marine research station in 1872, with early support from Charles Darwin, and its public aquarium still operates today. It closes at 5pm, so a late-afternoon visit here needs to be quick.

Conradin, the last Hohenstaufen heir to Naples' throne, was beheaded here in 1268 at just 16. A 19th-century monument inside, commissioned by Bavaria's King Maximilian II, marks his grave. The square also saw fighting in Masaniello's 1647 revolt.

One of Naples' oldest churches, dating to the 4th century under a different name before its 9th century rededication. A 1640 fire and a later earthquake forced Cosimo Fanzago to rebuild it back to front, so today's entrance is actually the apse of the original basilica.

This Renaissance gate replaced an older one in 1484, carved with classical trophies and winged Victories that look more triumphal arch than checkpoint. It once stood beside its namesake castle; today it stands alone.

Built in the 12th century by William I and enlarged by Frederick II as a royal residence, this became Naples' law courts, the Vicaria, after Spanish viceroys consolidated the legal system in the 1500s. Courts moved out from 1995, fully vacated by 2010. Restoration has kept the interior closed or guided-visit-only recently, so treat this as an exterior stop: admire the walls from the street and move on.

Everything pulled from Pompeii and Herculaneum's most famous houses lives here, not on site: the mosaics and frescoes, wall paintings lifted whole from villas buried in AD 79. The museum also holds the Farnese Marbles, including the four-meter Farnese Bull carved from one block. A later Vesuvius day trip makes more sense after seeing this.

This Carthusian monastery opened in 1368 and was rebuilt into its current Baroque form under Cosimo Fanzago starting in 1623, the same architect behind half of day one's church interiors. Its museum holds one of the world's finest collections of presepi, elaborate Neapolitan Christmas nativity scenes.

Spanish engineer Pedro Luis Escrivà reshaped this fortress into its six-pointed star between 1537 and 1547, the kind of design star forts adopted once cannon made round towers obsolete. The ramparts open onto the whole bay, Vesuvius included, the best panorama on this itinerary.