Complesso Monumentale San Lorenzo Maggiore — Attraction in Naples

There are two parts to visiting this very interesting historical site. The first is waking through the main Church area. While not as elaborate as the nearby basilica, it still has a very rich history and an older medieval feel. There are several tombs/coffins here from important families in the early history of Naples. There were also several students of a local tourism collage giving guided tours and explanations of the different parts of the church. It was very nice to hear the history from them (in English too!).

The church is built over a former ancient (Greek?) worship site that was wiped away by a flood. There were also ancient tombs below.

There is an underground city tour for 9 Euros. The guided tour explains how the ancient Greek structures were built over by the Romans and shows how the various construction layers show the history of the occupants and their architecture. It was really interesting to see how cities were built back then, including imagining how Roman shops, banks and markets would have looked. Part of the modern structure is from the medieval period and also quite interesting, and in rooms still used today! A true walking through history lane! You should get the guided tour to truly understand the underground city. Most tours are in Italian, but they offer a free English tours a day. We took the 11am...

First the positive - Our tour guide Daniele was 5 star. He was fantastic. We did the English tour, and he was knowledgeable, interesting, and gave a great tour.

Here’s the negative though - There was a super pushy MSC cruise ship guide with a group behind us. Their guide was SO rude. She showed no consideration for other groups, repeatedly talking over Daniele, and worse, interrupting him and rushing him along as he was trying to give our tour! It’s a narrow path. Groups go one by one, stopping at each area. She interrupted not once but twice(!) while he was talking to push us along. First of all, there was another group in front of us so really nowhere to go. Second, he was giving the official tour, everyone had paid for tickets (us, the cruise ship guests), and why could she not wait three minutes for us to finish before moving along? Understand they were on a shorter timeline, but that was still no excuse for her rude behavior. Having the cruise ship groups trying to move through at a faster pace than the official tour just isn’t conducive to a smooth experience, and really took away...

Beautiful place. Awful organisation. We went there and asked when the next English tour would be, and they told us 5pm and lasted for 50 minutes. So we went ahead and bought the tickets. We still had 40 minutes until 5 so we had a stroll around and came back at the meeting point. When we arrived they told us there was no tour at 5pm in English and if we wanted we could just walk around by ourselves, because the ticket was no refundable. We tried doing so with the audio guide online and found most places closed, chapels with the lights turned off, museums also closed. When trying to figure out where to go next to visit the spots marked down in the map, the guy that previously spoke to us in English pretended he only spoke Italian. He was closing down all rooms and we basically had to leave. The place was very pretty but it was an utter waste of time and money....