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The oldest wing of Naples’ cathedral is the city’s most ancient surviving building, a Paleo-Christian church dating from the 4th century. The cathedral also has the oldest baptistry in the western world. Archaeological excavations here have revealed structures reaching as far back as the ancient Greeks.

This sparkling white monastery complex commands the most perfect location in the entire city, attesting to the wealth and power the monks once enjoyed. In the 17th and 18th centuries they commissioned the greatest artists of the day to embellish their church and chambers in Baroque style – the church, in particular, is a flamboyant catalogue of colour and pattern, sporting at least one work by each and every famous hand of the age.

The original church here was built in 1310 and, after various renovations, has been returned to its Gothic style. The most famous feature is the adjoining convent’s 18th-century majolica cloister celebrating secular themes.

A rarity in Naples, this NeoClassical structure imitates the Pantheon, Rome’s great pagan temple to the gods built in the 2nd century AD. Inside and out the basilica is austere, with the exception of the polychrome marble Baroque altar.

This majestic building and its adjoining church were built in the late 1500s as a charitable institute set up to grant loans to the needy. In return, the noblemen who provided this service were guaranteed eternal salvation. Decorated mostly in late-Renaissance style, inside are sculptures by Pietro Bernini and frescoes by Corenzio.

Nicknamed Pietrasanta (holy stone) after its ancient stone marked with a cross, thought to grant indulgences to whoever kissed it, the original church here was built in the 10th and 11th centuries and the belltower is Naples’ only example of early medieval architecture. The present church, however, is Baroque.

This charitable institution was founded in 1601, inspired by Counter-Reformation precepts which gave weight to such works as a way of ensuring salvation. The church is set back from the street by a five-arch loggia, where pilgrims could find shelter. The altarpiece, The Acts of Mercy by Caravaggio, is a snapshot of a Neapolitan street in the 17th century.

According to legend, a church dedicated to St Lucy was built here in ancient times, although most experts date the earliest structure to the 9th century. Destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly, the present church is postwar. All the artworks were destroyed in World War II bombings, save an 18th-century statue of St Lucy and a couple of paintings.

Tradition holds that St Peter celebrated his first mass in Naples here, although historians claim the church is 12th-century.

The Neapolitan poet Jacopo Sannazaro, a confirmed humanist, ordered this church to be built in the 16th century and his tomb behind the high altar is notable for its lack of Christian symbolism. In a side chapel the painting of the Archangel Michael spearing the “Mergellina Devil” records the spiritual victory of a local bishop when a woman proclaimed her love for him.