San Gregorio Armeno - Virtual Tour 360°

Via San Gregorio Armeno is a street in the historic center of Naples, famous for tourism for the artisan shops of nativity scenes.

Typical of via San Gregorio Armeno is the sumptuous bell tower of the homonymous church that overlooks the street, which rises above the level of the same. The bell tower acts as a connecting flyover between the two convents (church and monastery) dedicated to San Gregorio Armeno.

Finally, along the road (going up from the lower decuman to the greater one), there is first the church of San Gregorio Armeno, built around the 10th century, and then, a little above, with a separate entrance from the religious building, the relative cloister. 

The street that is popularly called San Liguoro, turns out to be one of the stenopores (from the Gr .: stenosis, narrowing, and poros, passage) typical of Greek urban architecture which characterizes the whole ancient center of Naples.

As a stenoporos (hinge in Roman town planning), the street served as a link between the two plateiai (from the Gr .: plateia piazza) the greater plateia (now via dei Tribunali) and the lower one (today Spaccanapoli). The two main streets of ancient Neapolis (from the gr. "New City"), today's Naples, were therefore perpendicularly joined by this road, at the height of the Basilica of San Lorenzo Maggiore, where the agora stood.

Subsequently, the road was called plateia nostriana as the 15th bishop of Naples, San Nostriano, had baths built there for the poor.

Starting from Piazza San Gaetano we immediately see on the right the battered eighteenth-century building of the Banco del Popolo, once owned by the Casa degli Incurabili, which also possessed an additional adjacent building from a century older. Today, in a serious state of neglect, it needs important interventions since it presented various failures that led in 2011, in addition to the already present safety measures with Innocenti pipes, the installation of a temporary emergency protection for the many tourists.

About halfway, stands the historic church of San Gregorio Armeno founded around 930 on the foundations of the ancient temple of Ceres. Only in 1205 the church was dedicated to the saint of the same name.

At the end of via San Biagio, on the left you can see the church of San Gennaro all'Olmo, managed by the Giambattista Vico foundation (it is no coincidence that the philosopher was baptized here). Opposite, what is traditionally identified as the domus Ianuaria, that is the house of San Gennaro. A plaque placed in 1949 mentions this place as the birthplace of the saint.

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The crib art

The crib tradition of San Gregorio Armeno has a remote origin: in the street in classical times there was a temple dedicated to Ceres, to which the citizens offered small terracotta statuettes as ex voto, manufactured in the nearby shops.

The birth of the Neapolitan nativity scene is naturally much later and dates back to the end of the eighteenth century.

Today via San Gregorio Armeno is known all over the world as the exhibition center of the craft shops located here that now all year round make statuettes for nativity scenes, both canonical and original (usually every year the most eccentric artisans make statuettes with the features of characters of stringent topicality that perhaps stood out positively or negatively during the year).

The actual exhibitions begin around the Christmas holidays, usually from the beginning of November to January 6.

Map: San Gregorio Armeno - Virtual Tour 360°