Royal Palace, castles and churches of Naples: official prices, hours and closing days

Naples has three castles on the sea, a royal palace, a Carthusian monastery on top of the hill and more churches than you will see in a week. The problem is not what to see, it is that each of these places has a different price, different hours and a different closing day: the Royal Palace closes on Wednesdays, Castel Nuovo on Sundays, the Museo del Novecento at Castel Sant’Elmo on Tuesdays, and Castel dell’Ovo is closed altogether for works.

This page lines up the nine monuments that are worth your time, with official price, hours, closing day and metro stop checked against the official sites. The chapels with capped ticketing (the Veiled Christ) and the catacombs have their own pages: /sansevero-veiled-christ/ and /catacombs/. Partner prices checked regularly.

Table: official prices, hours and closing days

All official tickets are bought at the desk; the Royal Palace, Castel Sant’Elmo and San Martino also online on the ministry’s Musei Italiani platform, Castel Nuovo on the City’s ticket portal. An ANM single ticket costs €1.30 on metro Line 1 and the funiculars according to the Unico Campania fare schedule. For how to get from one place to the next see /transport/.

Royal Palace of Naples

It stands on piazza del Plebiscito, facing the basilica of San Francesco di Paola, and was home to the Spanish viceroys, the Bourbons and the House of Savoy. The ticket takes you into the State Apartment: the grand staircase, the Court Theatre, the Throne Room and thirty rooms of furnishings, tapestries and paintings. Also included are the Caruso Museum, dedicated to the tenor, and the Museo della Fabbrica. The official site (palazzorealedinapoli.org) allows an hour for the apartment.

Official price €15, reduced €2 for EU citizens aged 18–25, free under 18. The Romantic Garden is free, open daily 9:00–19:00; the Hanging Garden costs €2 extra. Watch out for Wednesdays: that is the closing day, different from the Tuesday of the other state museums.

Ticket or tour? The best-selling partner ticket is the combination with Villa Pignatelli in Chiaia: it costs €19 against €17 for the official combined ticket, and the two euros buy you instant purchase and free cancellation. The GetYourGuide ticket with digital audio guide is €23.50.

The small-group tour from €31.50 lasts two and a half hours and also covers the monumental area outside the palace: piazza del Plebiscito, the Galleria Umberto I, the Teatro San Carlo from the outside. It is worth it if this is your first time in Naples and you want to understand the district, not just the rooms.

Castel Nuovo (Maschio Angioino)

The castle with the five towers beside the port, two minutes from the Municipio stop on Line 1. Inside you visit the Hall of the Barons, the Palatine Chapel with its fourteenth-century frescoes, the Civic Museum with nineteenth-century Neapolitan paintings and, beneath the glass floor, the Roman remains and the pits. The white marble Triumphal Arch at the entrance is the most photographed piece.

According to the City of Naples website the ticket costs €10, free under 18, €5 with the Campania Artecard. Open Monday to Saturday 9:00–18:00 with last entry at 17:30; closed on Sundays and public holidays, apart from special openings. An hour is enough. No partner ticket: you buy at the desk by card or online on the City’s portal.

Castel dell’Ovo

The castle on the islet of Megaride, the one from the legend of Virgil’s egg, is closed to the public until further notice for renovation works, according to the City’s official page. Do not plan a visit.

What stays open is everything around it: the Borgo Marinari with its restaurants on the water, the seafront along via Partenope and the view of the castle from the Rotonda Diaz. It is worth a stroll at sunset, free, perhaps ending with pizza on via Partenope. From Municipio it is a 15-minute walk along via Medina and via Santa Lucia.

Castel Sant’Elmo and the Certosa di San Martino

They sit side by side at the top of the Vomero and can be done together in half a day. Go up on the Montesanto funicular to Morghen (Montesanto station connects with Line 2 and the Cumana) or on the Centrale funicular from via Toledo to piazza Fuga; from either it is a ten-minute uphill walk. Line 1 stops at Vanvitelli, a little further away.

Castel Sant’Elmo is the sixteenth-century star-shaped fortress with the highest terrace in the city: the gulf, Vesuvius, the historic centre laid out like a map and Capri in the distance. The castle opens 8:30–19:30, the Museo del Novecento inside it 9:30–17:00 with last entry at 16:00, closed on Tuesdays. Full ticket €5, reduced €2, according to the Ministry of Culture’s official listing; in bad weather the castle may stay closed.

The partner ticket with audio guide costs €13.50: you are paying for the audio guide, not for skipping the line, which is not needed here.

The Certosa di San Martino, next door, is the Carthusian monastery turned museum: the great marble cloister, the baroque church, the terraced gardens above the gulf and the nativity-scene section with the Cuciniello crib, the most famous in Naples. Hours 8:30–17:00 with last entry at 16:00, closed on Wednesdays, full ticket €6 and reduced €2 according to the Ministry of Culture’s official listing. At the time of checking the gardens were closed for works and the naval section excluded from the route. Allow an hour and a half. The two-hour guided tour combining San Martino and Sant’Elmo costs €29.40 and solves the problem of knowing what to look at in an enormous complex.

Santa Chiara: the majolica cloister

On Spaccanapoli, piazza del Gesù. The Gothic church, rebuilt after the bombing of 1943, is free and opens 7:45–12:45 and 16:40–20:00. What you pay for is the Cloister of the Clarisses: the pillars and benches covered in eighteenth-century majolica tiles with scenes of everyday life, vines and lemons. The ticket also includes the museum, the archaeological area with the Roman baths and the eighteenth-century nativity scene.

Standard rate €7, reduced €5, €4 for ages 7 to 17, free under 7, according to the official site (monasterodisantachiara.it). Hours Monday–Saturday 9:30–17:00, Sundays 10:00–14:00: on Sunday afternoons it is closed, bear that in mind if you are coming for the weekend. Metro Line 1 to Dante, an 8-minute walk. Half an hour inside is enough, longer if you sit down.

Cathedral and Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro

Via Duomo 147, Duomo stop on Line 1. Entry to the cathedral is free, and so is access to the Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro, the baroque chapel where the ampoules of blood that liquefies three times a year are kept (19 September is the main date).

The Cathedral runs free discovery visits, departing every half hour from 9:30 to 17:00, to the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte, the oldest in the Western world, and to the basilica of Santa Restituta; the rooftop route costs from €6.

The Museum of the Treasure of San Gennaro, with its entrance next to the Cathedral, is ticketed: €15 with audio guide included, reduced €11, free under 12, open daily 9:30–18:00 with last entry at 17:00 (data from the official site tesorosangennaro.it).

Inside are the mitre with 3,700 stones, the necklace of San Gennaro and the silverware donated by kings. The Tiqets partner ticket costs the same €15; the €17 combination adds the Pio Monte della Misericordia with Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy, a three-minute walk away: that is the right choice.

San Lorenzo Maggiore and the buried Neapolis

Piazza San Gaetano, on the upper decumanus, opposite via San Gregorio Armeno. The Gothic church is free; the €9 ticket is for going down to the excavations: the Roman macellum with its shops, the Greek street, beneath the church and the cloister. It is the easiest “underground” in Naples, with no narrow tunnels.

Open daily 9:30–17:30, reduced €7 with the Artecard and for over 65s, €6 under 18, free under 6, according to the official site (laneapolissotterrata.it). The Tiqets ticket with audio guide costs €10. Do not confuse it with Napoli Sotterranea, which starts from the same square: the differences are at /underground/.

Gesù Nuovo

The church with the diamond-pointed facade on piazza del Gesù, opposite Santa Chiara: it was a fifteenth-century palace, and the Jesuits turned it into a church in the sixteenth. Inside it is all marble and gold, with the chapel of San Giuseppe Moscati, the doctor saint, and the room of ex-votos. Free entry, open every day: the exact hours are not published online in any stable form, check the parish website (gesunuovo.it) and avoid mass times. Ten minutes, but do go in: the contrast between the dark facade and the interior is the whole point.

How to fit them into a day

Historic-centre day: Cathedral and Treasure of San Gennaro (9:30), Pio Monte della Misericordia, San Lorenzo Maggiore, a break on via San Gregorio Armeno, Santa Chiara and Gesù Nuovo in the afternoon. All on foot, between the Duomo and Dante stops on Line 1. If you add the Veiled Christ, book the slot days in advance.

Plebiscito and Vomero day: Royal Palace at opening (not on a Wednesday), Castel Nuovo (not on a Sunday), lunch, Centrale funicular from via Toledo, San Martino (not on a Wednesday) and the terrace of Sant’Elmo for sunset. Wednesday is the worst day for this circuit: the Royal Palace and the Certosa are closed at the same time.

Anyone staying three days who also wants to do Pompeii and the MANN will want to weigh up the Campania Artecard, which includes the Royal Palace, Castel Sant’Elmo, San Martino and Castel Nuovo: the calculation is at /artecard/. The day-by-day itineraries are at /itineraries/ and the complete picture of tickets at /tickets/.

In short

The Royal Palace at €15 and Castel Nuovo at €10 are the two tickets worth paying for in the centre; the Vomero with Sant’Elmo and San Martino costs €11 in total and is the half day with the view. The Cathedral, Gesù Nuovo and the churches of Santa Chiara and San Lorenzo are free, you only pay for the cloister, the excavations and the treasure. Castel dell’Ovo you admire from outside. Check the closing day before leaving the hotel, and if you want the Royal Palace with no fuss, take the combined ticket below.