San Domenico Maggiore

About this place

Above the sacristy, on a wooden gallery running around three walls some four metres off the floor, stand forty-odd draped coffins: Aragonese kings and princes, Neapolitan nobles and their wives, kept in plain sight rather than buried under the paving. Neapolitans call it the passage of the dead, and it is both the strangest thing in San Domenico Maggiore and the last thing you forget after leaving. The church is late thirteenth century, raised by Charles II for the Dominicans on Gothic bones that Neapolitan Baroque later reworked until the marble and gilding almost hid them. Thomas Aquinas taught theology in the attached convent in 1272; his cell is still opened on the full route, along with the crucifix that legend says spoke to him with the words: you have written well of me, Thomas. One local oddity: what faces the piazza is not the front of the church but its apse. The historic main façade looks onto a courtyard off a narrow lane on the far side, even though the staircase on the square is the door most visitors use today. Two things to know before you book. First, Caravaggio's Flagellation of Christ, painted for this very church, is no longer in it: it moved to the Capodimonte museum in 1972 and an old copy attributed to Andrea Vaccaro hangs in its place. Second, the church itself is free and open, while the sacristy, the treasury room, Aquinas's cell and the Carafa crypt are seen on a guided route, from around €8 and up to €11 for the full one. If the great nave is all you want, fifteen minutes will satisfy you. If you came for the coffins, book a slot ahead rather than waiting on the next free guide at the door. Outside, the square — with its obelisk vowed after the plague of 1656 and finished only in 1737 — is one of the most likeable corners of the old city after dark: students on the steps, cafés open late, a venerable pastry shop on the corner. You are directly on the Spaccanapoli line, and the Sansevero chapel with its Veiled Christ is three minutes' walk away, so the two fit comfortably into one morning. The ground is flat and easy with children, but mind your bag and the delivery scooters that come fast down the narrow lanes; in the old centre that is daily routine, not bad luck.