Pio Monte della Misericordia

Pio Monte della Misericordia tickets: the guided visit

The visit we sell, at €30, is a 35-minute guided tour with entry included. It starts with a short introduction to the charity’s history, then takes you to the octagonal church and the Caravaggio. The painting packs seven acts of mercy into one canvas, and a guide helps you find them all. Be there 10 minutes early.

You can cancel it free up to 24 hours before, and the price is the same at every age. Check the guide’s language before you pick a time. Visitors on their own don’t need to book at the Pio Monte, which has no time slots; our visit has a start time.

The Pio Monte and the Campania Artecard

The Campania Artecard doesn’t give free entry here: since April 2023 the 7-day card and the 365 Gold give only a discount of 20 per cent, and the 365 Lite doesn’t cover it, so the card is worth having for the state sites on its list, such as the Archaeological Museum and Pompeii, more than for this one. None of the other Naples Pass and Naples city passes we sell includes the Pio Monte.

Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy in the octagonal church

The Seven Works of Mercy hangs over the high altar of an octagonal church on the ground floor, designed by Francesco Antonio Picchiatti and built between 1656 and 1671. Six more canvases hang on the side altars, among them works by Luca Giordano and Battistello Caracciolo, and in four niches stand red coral sculptures that the Belgian artist Jan Fabre made in 2019.

Caravaggio painted the altarpiece while he was on the run from the Papal States, after being sentenced in Rome for a killing. It was commissioned by Giovan Battista Manso, one of the charity’s seven founders, and the Pio Monte paid 400 ducats for it, a sum its own history calls exorbitant.

The seven works of mercy are the acts of charity towards the body that the Church asks of Christians, and Caravaggio put them all in one scene on a Neapolitan street corner, with the Virgin and Child held up by angels above. You can pick out Pero breastfeeding her father, Cimon, in prison, a dead man carried to burial behind a priest with a torch, St Martin cutting his cloak in two, a pilgrim on the way to Santiago and Samson drinking from a jawbone.

The picture gallery upstairs at the Pio Monte

The royal staircase takes you up to the charity’s old apartment on the first floor, where the gallery hangs about 160 paintings over 770 square metres. It’s Neapolitan painting from the 15th to the 19th century, with Ribera, Luca Giordano and Mattia Preti among the names.

A contemporary section adds about 60 works given since 2008, including pieces by Anish Kapoor and Mimmo Jodice. The gallery has only been open to the public since 1972; until then it was for the charity’s members, and until 1914 the charity sold paintings at auction to pay for its work.

There’s a lift up to the gallery, a ramp at the church entrance and an adapted toilet on the first floor, and there’s a braille guide too.

When the Pio Monte opens, and the no-phone rule

Phones are allowed only for the audio guide. Don’t sit on the floor or on the steps of the staircase, keep your voice down, and leave food, drinks, backpacks and big bags in the free cloakroom by the ticket desk, collecting them at least 30 minutes before closing.

Mass is said in the church at 9:30 every day but Sunday, before the doors open to visitors. The first Sunday of the month isn’t a free day here, as it is at Italy’s state museums. The Pio Monte is still a charity, and the money from its own tickets goes to its social projects.

The Pio Monte on Via dei Tribunali, by the cathedral

You’ll find it at Via dei Tribunali 253, facing Piazza Riario Sforza and its spire of San Gennaro, right next to the cathedral and the Treasure of San Gennaro. Line 1’s Duomo station is less than 10 minutes’ walk away, and line 2 stops at Piazza Cavour, about 750 metres off. Buses C55, C57, R2, 201 and 203 stop nearby, and there’s no parking.