A baroque jewel within the larger Gothic cathedral of Naples, the Royal Chapel of the Treasure of Saint Januarius houses the most venerated relics in the city: two ampoules of dried blood that, since at least the fourteenth century, have been the focus of a recurring miracle in which the blood is said to liquefy at certain moments of the year. The chapel was built in the early seventeenth century to fulfil a public vow taken by the people of Naples during a plague in 1526. The architects Francesco Grimaldi and his successors completed a richly decorated Greek-cross room with a great central dome, marble facings, gilded bronze fittings and frescoes by the leading Neapolitan painters of the age. The frescoes in the dome, the pendentives and the lateral apses were painted between the 1640s and the 1660s by Domenichino, Giovanni Lanfranco and Battista Caracciolo, with works by Massimo Stanzione, Giuseppe Ribera and others on the side walls. The dome, with its swirling Apotheosis of Saint Januarius, is one of the most spectacular ceiling paintings in southern Italy. The chapel reliquary cupboard, hidden behind the high altar, holds the silver bust of Saint Januarius made in the fourteenth century and the two ampoules of dried blood that draw the crowds. The blood is ritually exposed on the saint feast day on 19 September, on the first Saturday in May and on 16 December, and the failure of the blood to liquefy is widely regarded in Naples as a bad omen for the year to come. The treasury also holds an extraordinary collection of liturgical objects accumulated over four centuries from votive offerings by Neapolitan kings, queens, popes and private donors, including a silver-gilt mitre encrusted with thousands of precious stones, gold chalices, embroidered vestments and reliquaries by some of the finest silversmiths of Italy. The chapel is administered separately from the rest of the cathedral by a lay committee, the Deputation of the Treasure, that has run it since the seventeenth century, and the adjoining Museum of the Treasure of San Gennaro can be visited on a separate ticket, displaying a substantial part of the collection that does not normally fit into the chapel itself.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Via Duomo 147, Naples, Italy

Website: https://www.tesorosangennaro.it