Chiesa di San Domenico Maggiore

Lonely Planet review

Rudely giving its back to the Piazza, this vast Gothic number features a double flight of marble steps leading up to the apse. Completed in 1324 on the orders of Charles I of Anjou, it was built onto the medieval church of San Michele Arcangelo as the royal church of the Angevins.

The church's three-nave interior, a cross between baroque and 19th-century neo-Gothic, has undergone various facelifts, leaving little of the original Gothic design. Of the few 14th-century remnants, the frescoes by Pietro Cavallini in the Cappella Brancaccio take the cake. In the Cappellone del Crocifisso, the 13th-century Crocifisso tra La Vergine e San Giovanni is said to have spoken to St Thomas Aquinas, asking him: 'Bene scripsisti di me, Thoma; quam recipies a me pro tu labore mercedem?' ('You've written good things about me, Thomas, what will you get in return?') - 'Domine non aliam nisi te' ('Nothing if not you, O Lord'), Thomas replied diplomatically.

The softly-lit sacristy contains a lovely ceiling fresco and 45 coffins of Aragon princes and other nobles. Curiously enough, the first bishop of New York, Richard Luke Concanen (1747-1810), is also buried here.