Museum and Royal Park of Capodimonte

Capodimonte is the great secret of Naples: a world-class art museum that most visitors to the city never reach. It occupies the royal palace built by the Bourbon king Charles from 1738 on the hill above the Sanità, originally to house the Farnese art collection he had inherited from his mother, Elisabetta Farnese. Today its galleries hold one of the richest collections of paintings in Italy, much of it in rooms where you may be almost alone. The Farnese collection on the first floor reads like a roll-call of the Renaissance: Masaccio's Crucifixion, Raphael, Titian's portraits of the Farnese pope Paul III and his celebrated Danaë, Parmigianino's mysterious Antea, Bellini's Transfiguration, Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Parable of the Blind, and El Greco. The royal apartments show how the Bourbons lived, with the famous porcelain parlour (salottino di porcellana) made by the Capodimonte factory, its walls entirely clad in porcelain. On the second floor, the Neapolitan galleries trace the city's own golden age of painting, culminating in Caravaggio's Flagellation of Christ, painted in Naples, alongside Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith Slaying Holofernes, Ribera, Luca Giordano and Mattia Preti. A contemporary collection on the top floor includes Andy Warhol's Vesuvius. Around the palace, the Real Bosco, the royal park, spreads over more than a hundred hectares of woodland avenues, lawns and lookout points over the bay, a favourite of Neapolitan families at weekends and free to enter.

Practicalities: the museum is open every day except Wednesday, from morning to early evening, with the ticket office closing an hour earlier; booking is optional and tickets are moderately priced, and the museum is part of the Campania Artecard. The park opens early in the morning and closes at dusk, which in November to January means late afternoon. Getting there takes a little effort, which is part of why it stays quiet: buses run up Via Capodimonte from the Archaeological Museum and Piazza Dante, taxis are inexpensive, and some visitors walk up through the Sanità and the catacombs. Allow two to three hours for the highlights and longer if paintings are your passion; the collection is large, so pick your floors.

How to see it: start on the first floor with the Farnese masterpieces and the royal apartments, then climb to the second floor for Caravaggio and the Neapolitan painters. If time allows, finish with the contemporary rooms and their views. Then walk out into the Real Bosco: the avenues fanning out from the palace lead to a belvedere over the city and bay, and the park is a lovely place for a picnic or a run. Temporary exhibitions are frequent and often excellent, and the museum hosts evening openings on special occasions.

Pair Capodimonte with the Catacombs of San Gennaro, just down the hill, and the Archaeological Museum below, for a day that runs from Roman antiquity to the Baroque. With children, combine a shorter museum visit with an hour in the park. For art lovers who think they know Italian painting, Capodimonte is a revelation: few museums in Italy offer this quality with this much space to enjoy it. The honest drawbacks are the journey up the hill, a café offer that is modest for a museum of this scale, and labels that can be thin in English, so an audio guide or a little reading beforehand pays off. On a clear day, step out onto the palace forecourt before you leave: the view down over the domes of the city to the bay is a fitting last picture.