Duomo di Napoli

This guide to the Duomo di Napoli treats the cathedral as a kind of courtroom, where three times a year crowds gather to watch two glass ampoules of a saint's dried blood to see whether it turns liquid. The saint is Gennaro, a bishop from nearby Benevento beheaded during Diocletian's persecution in the year 305, whose blood, legend says, was caught in a vial by a woman named Eusebia and carried to Naples within a few years of his death. The guide traces the ritual back to its first written record in 1389, then leads you beneath the main altar into the Succorpo, a marble crypt from the fourteen hundreds holding the saint's bones directly under your feet. Stand here in September or December, when the ritual falls due, and watch how a whole city reads a handkerchief instead of a headline.