Treasure of San Gennaro Museum

Treasure of San Gennaro tickets: the museum, the chapel and the Filangieri

The Chapel of the Treasure, inside the cathedral, is free to walk into during its opening hours, which break for lunch. The museum next door is the part you pay for. The ticket we sell, at €15, covers the museum, and its audio guide carries on into the chapel.

If you have an hour, the museum is worth the ticket: the chapel and the cathedral cost nothing, but only the museum has the jewels themselves, the mitre, the necklace and the busts. You can cancel or move the ticket until midnight the day before, and you show it at the box office in the museum courtyard. Children under 12 go in free with their own option at checkout, over-65s pay €11, and the audio guide needs earphones, which aren’t included, so bring a wired pair.

The ticket with the Filangieri, at €17, adds the Museo Filangieri, in a 15th-century palace on the same street, at Via Duomo 288. When Via Duomo was widened after the cholera of 1884, the palace’s whole front was moved back 20 metres. Inside are oriental weapons, porcelain, a library of about 30,000 books and a room of paintings by Ribera, Luca Giordano and Solimena.

You don’t have to book, though the museum says a ticket bought online skips the queue. Until 10 January 2027, an exhibition, Il Colore di Mimmo Jodice, is included in the ticket.

The Chapel of San Gennaro, free inside the cathedral

The chapel the city promised in 1527 is inside the cathedral, under a double dome by Francesco Grimaldi, with frescoes by Domenichino and Lanfranco and paintings by Ribera done in oil on copper. Behind the high altar, in a safe, are the ampoules of the saint’s blood, and they come out only on the days of the miracle.

The blood is expected to liquefy on the Saturday before the first Sunday in May (1 May in 2027), on 19 September and on 16 December, which recalls the eruption of 1631. In May and September the ampoules stay on show for a week, in December for a day.

The museum stays open through the chapel’s lunch break, so a morning visit gets you both in one go, or you can do the museum while the chapel is shut. The cathedral itself is free, open from 8:30 to 19:30, and runs a guided visit of about an hour to the church of Santa Restituta and the Baptistery, every half hour from 9:30 to 17:00, by donation, with nothing to book. The visits pause during Mass, at 9:00 and 18:30, and on Sundays and holidays also at 11:00 and 12:30.

The museum and the chapel can be visited in a wheelchair, with ramps and a stairlift run by staff, though the sacristies can’t. Photos without flash are fine, animals are allowed and small bags too, but there’s no left-luggage.

What’s in the museum: the mitre, the necklace and 54 silver busts

Start with Matteo Treglia’s mitre. It weighs 18 kilos, and one of its rubies is known as the Lava of Vesuvius.

The necklace began in 1679 as thirteen gold links by Michele Dato and is hung with gifts from kings and queens: Charles of Bourbon, Queen Maria Carolina, Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother, and Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of united Italy.

Around them stand 54 silver busts, 53 of the city’s co-patron saints and one of the Virgin, which the museum calls the largest such collection in the world. The reliquary bust of San Gennaro himself was made in 1304, under Charles II of Anjou, king of Naples.

Which Naples cards include the Treasure of San Gennaro

The museum is included on three cards we sell, and the Museum Card and the Museums & Underground Card also add the Filangieri. Naples Pass and Naples city passes lines them up against the rest.

The Campania Artecard is a muddle here. Its own list puts the Treasure among the 7-day card’s included choices, while the museum puts Artecard holders on its reduced ticket, so ask at the desk before you spend one of your included entries on it.

Getting to the Treasure of San Gennaro on Via Duomo

Line 1 of the metro has a Duomo station, opened in 2021, about 200 metres from the museum at Via Duomo 149, right beside the cathedral. Line 2 stops at Piazza Cavour, about 400 metres off. From the central station it’s a walk of just over a kilometre, along Corso Umberto, through Piazza Nicola Amore and up Via Duomo.

Don’t come by car, because Via Duomo is inside the old town’s limited traffic zone. The Pio Monte della Misericordia, with Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy, is right next to the cathedral on Via dei Tribunali.