Italy Guide
Campania
San Lorenzo Maggiore
The church of San Lorenzo Maggiore is a light, spacious Gothic church, unspoiled by later additions and with a soaring Gothic ambulatory at its apse – unusual in Italy, even more so in Naples. It's a mainly thirteenth- and fourteenth-century building, though with a much later facade, built during the reign of the Angevin king Robert the Wise on the site of a Roman basilica – remains of which are in the cloisters. You can look at bits and pieces from the church in the attached museum or descend to the excavations beneath the church (both Mon– Sat 10am–5pm, Sun 10am–1.30pm; €5) to explore the remains of the Roman forum and, before that, the Greek agora – a rare chance to see exactly how the layers of the city were built up over the centuries, and to get some idea of how Naples must have looked back in the fifth century BC.