CHIESA DI SAN DOMENICO MAGGIORE

In 1283, King Charles d'Anjou inaugurated the construction of the church, which incorporates an early medieval sanctuary dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel (its portal, rebuilt in the ^14th century, can be seen to the left of the chevet, at the top of the stairs). From the ^15th to the ^19th century, successive alterations altered its original appearance, culminating in a radical restoration in the neo-Gothic style. The interior is an imposing Latin cross with three naves. The side aisles are flanked by chapels housing frescoes and funerary monuments. The Brancaccio chapel, in particular, houses a cycle of frescoes by Pietro Cavallini, an important early ^14th-century Roman painter who was a contemporary of the Florentine painters Cimabue and Giotto and, like them, was interested in the representation of space and the human figure. These are the only frescoes in the church dating back to the Angevin period, when the building was first constructed. Several members of the House of Aragon are also buried here. King Alfonso ^I of Aragon himself was buried here, until his remains were transferred to Spain two centuries later. The Museo Doma ticket office is located in the right-hand nave: the entrance gives access to the treasure room, the sacristy whose vault is decorated with the Triumph of Faith, a grandiose fresco by Francesco Solimena, the crypt and the cell occupied by Saint Thomas Aquinas when he studied at the University of Naples.