here's a moment in Naples when everything ancient comes alive again. The stones gleam in the warm sunlight, the historic facades of palaces become stages for new visions, and the streets—those narrow, uneven ones, dense with history—vibrate with a vitality that only May can restore. It's the May of Monuments 2025, and this year the entire city transforms into a pulsating organism, burning and shining. It's not a blaze, but an illumination. From May 2nd to June 1st, 320 events including concerts, guided tours, art installations, open-air cinema, urban performances, and temporary exhibitions will light up every neighborhood, from the historic center to the outskirts, in a crescendo of emotions and discoveries. In this context, Naples is transforming, becoming a place to be perceived with all five senses. It's meant to be experienced on your skin, with your heart, with wonder. The invitation is to seek out details we usually rush past: the hidden bas-relief in a Baroque church, the staircase of a convent that only opens this month, the voice of an actor passionately reciting Eduardo De Filippo in a Spaccanapoli courtyard.
What is May of Monuments and why was It created
The May of Monuments is a collective ritual of rediscovery and belonging. Born in 1994, during a period when the city was seeking cultural and social redemption, the project drew inspiration from the French campaign “Monuments Portes Ouvertes” of 1984, immediately taking on a more visceral and popular nature in Naples. Mirella Barracco, patron and president of the Fondazione Napoli Novantanove, shaped it, envisioning an event capable of bringing citizens closer to their artistic heritage. The intent was to transform them, turning them from distracted spectators into active custodians of beauty and memory.
In those years, Naples experienced a difficult yet fertile period: the urgent need was to mend the city’s glorious past with its disordered present. For this reason, in May, doors opened. Not just those of physical monuments, but those of consciousness. Closed churches, inaccessible noble courtyards, forgotten hypogea: everything became visible, accessible, and narrated again. The important thing was to make everything participatory. And that’s exactly what happened.
Over the years, the May of Monuments has transformed into a large civic and cultural laboratory, involving schools, associations, tourist guides, artists, musicians, actors, and ordinary citizens. The historic center has become a widespread stage for a culture that permeates the streets with even greater depth.
Each edition has had a specific theme, chosen to stimulate reflection and creativity. A common thread that doesn’t impose but inspires: from Bourbon legacies to the figure of Giambattista Vico, from underground waters to the urban landscape as an art form, leading up to 2025 with its “Naples, Burning Heart, Illuminated Mind.” What does this phrase mean? We’ll see in the next paragraph. What’s enough to say and remember, for now, is that nature is not luxury but flame. And that Naples has always burned with passion, facts, and beauty.
Fire, symbol of rebirth for 2025
Let’s delve into the chosen theme, a phrase borrowed from Matilde Serao. A visionary journalist and writer, with the phrase “Naples, burning heart, illuminated mind,” she embodies the city’s dual soul – chaos and wonder.
Fire isn’t taken as a mere natural element here: it’s a symbol, a myth, primordial energy, the same energy that flows through Naples and the minds of its inhabitants in May. After celebrating other elements in past years—earth, air, water—now it’s time for the most powerful, most controversial, most Neapolitan of them all. We’re talking about a fire that destroys and regenerates, that burns but illuminates, that consumes and at the same time creates. It’s the lava that sweeps everything away only to make the soil fertile, it’s the furnace of art, the warmth of thought. It’s Vesuvius, of course, but also Giordano Bruno’s philosophical brazier, the burning of the soul that shines in Totò’s verses, in Caravaggio’s paintings housed at Pio Monte della Misericordia, in the hands of a pizza maker shaping his dough disc like a ceramist with living clay.
You’ll feel it in the alleys lit up by street theater, in the drums beating to the city’s rhythm, in the fireworks exploding over the Gulf at the end of the evening. You’ll see it in the golden glimmers of a Baroque altarpiece in San Gregorio Armeno, in the lit candles in front of a votive shrine, and in the cobalt red of a sunset observed from Posillipo.
And then, it’s the fire of the mind, of ideas, of utopias and visions. It’s what pushed the lazzari to revolt, the saints to preach, and the 18th-century scientists to found Enlightenment Naples. A fire that Naples has always held within, and that flares up in May.
Must-see events, from Cinema to exhibitions
A Tribute to David Lynch – On May 30th, in Piazza del Gesù, the city will transform into an open-air cinema with a free screening of the Twin Peaks pilot, a tribute to David Lynch. The next day, at Multicinema Modernissimo, a Lynch marathon will bring subsequent episodes to the big screen, interspersed with creative workshops and urban performances. A Naples that dreams and reflects itself in the distorted mirrors of the American mind.
Capodimonte on Fire – Inside the Capodimonte Museum, the “Capodimonte on Fire” exhibition will intertwine art and nature, narrating Naples’ relationship with eruption, alchemy, and creative combustion. The exhibition will include a thematic path for families, adults, and visually impaired visitors, with appointments on May 3rd, 24th, and 31st. Special mention goes to Pierre-Jaques Volaire‘s famous work, “Eruption of Vesuvius from the Maddalena Bridge” (1782), an oil on canvas that can be admired on the first floor in Room 29.
The Paths of Fire – In Vomero, the hilly and bourgeois neighborhood, the flame will take on various literary forms: readings, theatrical performances, animated stories by Maurizio de Giovanni and Rosaria De Cicco, voices that know Naples from within. Not the postcard version, but the scorching, real one.
Neapolitan Red – In Bagnoli, in the industrial heart of the city, Tony Esposito in “Rosso Napoletano” will reconstruct with tribal rhythms and narration the dismantling of Italsider, evoking an era when the flames of the furnaces defined the destiny of thousands of families. A political and poetic act that also speaks to outsiders.
FAI Guided Tours – Among the most evocative moments of the May of Monuments 2025 are the guided tours organized by FAI – Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano (Italian Environmental Fund), which will exceptionally open the doors of two extraordinary and often inaccessible places in the heart of the city: Palazzo San Giacomo and the Pontificia Reale Basilica di San Giacomo degli Spagnoli. The visits will be accompanied by enthusiastic Apprendisti Ciceroni (Apprentice Ciceros), high school students from Naples (Carlo Poerio, Liceo Sannazaro, Liceo Mazzini, and Istituto Serra), who will guide visitors with a lively and passionate narrative. Participation requires a free contribution and also offers an opportunity to get closer to the FAI world, with the possibility of signing up and becoming members.
Federico II University Events – The University of Naples Federico II will participate in the May of Monuments 2025 with a series of events, including guided tours, shows, and podcasts on the theme of fire, involving students and professors in a dialogue between academic knowledge and cultural heritage. The journey, composed of 12 main moments detailed here, aims to explore the role of the chosen element, fire, in Neapolitan history, art, science, and culture. Reading and in-depth historical and scientific meetings, guided tours, artistic performances, and a podcast will narrate a thematic itinerary in a collective narrative on cultural heritage capable of uniting memories and identities, past and future.
Visits to the Girolamini Complex – The Complesso dei Girolamini, one of the most majestic places just a few steps from Via Duomo, will open its doors with guided tours curated by students from the I.S.I.S “Enrico Caruso” of Naples, every Tuesday and Thursday in May, at 10:30 AM and 11:30 AM. Additionally, extraordinary openings are scheduled for May 17th and 26th, with tours conducted by museum staff. The Complesso dei Girolamini, which includes the monumental church, the cloister, the sacristy, and the extraordinary Biblioteca Oratoriana, is one of the finest examples of Neapolitan Baroque. Founded in the 16th century by the Filippini Fathers, it has been a center of culture, spirituality, and music over the centuries: suffice it to say that the famous composer Giuseppe de Majo worked within its walls, and that the library – one of the oldest and most important in Southern Italy – houses over 160,000 volumes, including incunabula, manuscripts, rare texts, and musical scores. For those participating in the May of Monuments, the Girolamini is a must-visit: a place that encapsulates centuries of devotion and knowledge, capable of moving even beyond faith.
To discover the complete program promoted by the Municipality of Naples, consult all the details and initiatives here.
Santa Chiara Boutique Hotel: your retreat in the heart of Naples
To experience the May of Monuments without filters, there’s no more authentic place than the Santa Chiara Boutique Hotel. Located in the vibrant heart of the ancient center, we are much more than just accommodation: we are a privileged window onto a Naples that burns with history and shines with the future.
Stepping out of our door, you’ll find yourself in the midst of the city’s most evocative alleys, among seventeenth-century palaces with secret courtyards, churches that only in May reveal their gilded interiors, and glimpses where the sacred meets the everyday. During the festival, these places transform into temporary art galleries, urban stages, laboratories of visions.
Don’t think of this event as a simple calendar of activities: it’s an invisible thread that unites ancient tuff with contemporary thought, lava with dreams, burning away old stereotypes and making space for a new city — one that is deeply rooted in itself.
Naples doesn’t want you as a spectator: it wants you as a protagonist.
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