Fodor's Expert Review Santa Brigida

The Lucchesi fathers built this church around 1640 in honor of the Swedish queen and saint who visited her fellow queen, Naples's unsaintly Giovanna I, in 1372 and became one of the first people to publicly denounce the loose morals and overt sensuality of the Neapolitans. The height of the church's dome was limited to prevent its interfering with cannon fire from nearby Castel Nuovo, but Luca Giordano, the pioneer painter of the trompe-l'oeil Baroque dome, effectively opened it up with a spacious sky serving as the setting for an Apotheosis of Saint Bridget (1678), painted (and restored in 2018) in exchange for his tomb space, marked by a pavement inscription in the left transept. Don't miss the sacristy with its ceiling fresco from the Giordano school.