Basilica di San Lorenzo Maggiore

Under the Gothic apse of San Lorenzo Maggiore lie streets of Roman Naples. On Piazza San Gaetano along Via dei Tribunali, the Franciscan basilica stands above an excavated forum, market and street of shops.

Why it matters

The excavations beneath the basilica preserve the ancient forum of Neapolis, which served as both the Roman forum and the Greek city's agora. The basilica was rebuilt in French Gothic style under Charles I of Anjou. The convent, church and excavated city together document Naples' history from the fifth century BC to the eighteenth century AD.

What to notice

The apse has a circular ambulatory and radial chapels under ribbed vaults. The chapel of the Madonna degli Angeli contains frescoes of 1333–34 by Antonio Cavarretto, a pupil of Giotto. At the crossing is a marble high altar of 1500 by Giovanni Merliano da Nola, with reliefs of the martyrdom of St Lawrence and miracles of St Anthony. Other rooms include the Sala Capitolare, with a fourteenth-century portal and frescoed vaults, and the Sala Sisto V, the friars' refectory with early-seventeenth-century frescoes by Luigi Rodriguez. Excavations include a Greek stenopos later used as a medieval cardo; a Roman building with nine barrel-vaulted tabernae, including an oven and dyeing vats; a cryptoporticus with rooms that may have included the erarium; and the macellum, a porticoed market of the second half of the first century AD with a central circular tholos.

Context and history

The Greek plaza at this crossing existed by the fifth century BC; Roman reorganization in the first century AD created the market and the street of shops; alluvial deposits buried the quarter in the late fifth century; and in the thirteenth century the Franciscans, established here under the new dynasty, raised the Gothic basilica and convent over the whole ensemble. The friars' nave — one broad central hall with twenty-three side chapels, shaped by Franciscan preaching ideals — made the church a model for the city, and the convent became one of the great intellectual compounds of medieval Naples. The excavations are managed with the church, museum and halls as one monumental complex. A four-floor museum presents finds from the dig alongside medieval material and eighteenth-century nativity figures.