Museo di Capodimonte

The Capodimonte museum has been compared to the Louvre in Paris and the Hermitage in St Petersburg and there's no doubt that the list of treasures held in this Neapolitan palazzo is breathtaking: some of the finest masterpieces from 15th through to the 19th century are held here, including works by Mantegna, El Greco, Botticelli, Titian, Masaccio, Tintoretto and Raphael.

There are exquisite porcelain collections (as well as contemporary ones), and thousands of drawings from the Farnese collection (including cartoons by Michelangelo and Raphael), and that's just the ground floor. The first floor is given over to the sumptous royal apartments: Queen Maria Amalia's fabulous boudoir is among them, while the second features Caravaggio's 'Flagellation'. Much of the third floor sees more contemporary works, including Andy Warhol's technicoloured 'Vesuvius'. The current exhibition (until January 23, 2011), which is well worth catching, is video artist Bill Viola's 'meeting' with Caravaggio.