SPACCANAPOLI, San Domenico Maggiore

Just behind the Spire of San Domenico, as harsh as the bastion of a fortress, you can see the back of the Church of San Domenico that Charles II of Anjou had built towards the end of the 1200s.

The nearby convent of the Dominican Friars was one of the most brilliant cultural centers in Naples, and can boast masters or pupils that are among some of the greatest names in the history of philosophy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque age, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Giordano Bruno, and Tommaso Campanella.

Closely embedded between the houses and palaces of a very packed historic center, the Church of San Domenico is one of the most important Gothic buildings of Naples; it was built between the 1200s and the 1300s and has an extraordinary patrimony of artwork. You enter from a small courtyard that can be reached by going along Vico San Domenico.

The interior is large and majestic, but has been ruined by heavy nineteenth-century restorations that sought to "give the church back" its medieval forms; unfortunately the result of the intervention, as you will see, was inadequate. Fortunately, its painting and sculptural masterpieces are intact, including many monumental tombs; they can almost all be found in the side chapels....