Certosa di San Martino ★

Paintings, presepi, and great views at a monastery-museum high above Naples

This 14th-century Carthusian monastery was baroqued in the 17th century, and is today famous for its fine church, peaceful cloisters, great views, small painting gallery, and remarkable presepio collection of Christmas crèches. What's more, the views across the city below from its perch atop Vomero hill are fantastic.

The marble-clad church has a ceiling painting of the Ascension by Lanfranco in the nave along with 12 Prophets by Giuseppe Ribera, who also did the Institution of the Eucharist on the left wall of the choir (Lanfranco painted the Crucifixion and Guido Reni the Nativity at the choir's back wall). In the church treasury is Luca Giordano's ceiling fresco of the Triumph of Judith (1704) and Ribera's masterful Descent from the Cross.

The vast museum of presepi houses dozens of Neapolitan Christmas crèches with an overall cast of thousands—some holy figures, mostly peasants—that have come out of the workshops of Naples' greatest craftsmen over the past four centuries. (Read more on the art and Neapolitan tradition of presepi.)

The modest painting and sculpture gallery houses 15th- to 18th-century works, including a few by Bernini, Caracciolo, and Vaccaro.

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