Food Tours · Tour

A Lucky Corno from San Gregorio Armeno, and Nine Stops

Three hours that cross the whole old city, from the cathedral at the top of Via Duomo down to Piazza del Plebiscito, with your guide holding a board outside the neo-Gothic white facade of Santa Maria Assunta. Inside is the chapel of San Gennaro, where a sealed phial of the saint's blood is expected to liquefy three times a year in front of a full church. Naples reads the outcome as a forecast for the city, and treats a failure as serious news. On Via dei Tribunali you get the tarallo, which the operator calls a spicy salted cookie and which you choose the flavour of. San Gregorio Armeno follows, the alley of nativity workshops, and this is where the tour gives you something no other one does: a corno, the twisted red horn that Neapolitans hang in cars, over doors and around necks against bad luck. It has to be given, not bought for yourself, which is a rule the tour happens to satisfy. Then Santa Chiara, the largest Angevin Gothic basilica in the city, Spaccanapoli with another tasting, and Piazza del Gesù Nuovo, where the church wears a facade of diamond-cut stone and the Guglia dell'Immacolata mixes Gothic and Rococo without apologising. You pass Teatro San Carlo, working since 1737, and the 1890 glass dome of Galleria Umberto I with its mosaic floor. Piazza del Plebiscito is the semicircle modelled on the Pantheon, with the two Bourbon equestrian statues by Canova and his workshop in front of the church. The last stop is Via Toledo: pizza a portafoglio folded in on itself, or fried pizza, with water, then a sfogliatella or babà with a Neapolitan espresso. Fifteen travellers at most, guided in English, suitable for all fitness levels. Hotel transfers only if you booked that option. Wear shoes you can walk three hours in.