Art Institute of ChicagoGrant Park / Loop

Neapolitan Crèche

Upcoming21 November 2026 – 4 January 2027$32

The museum's 18th-century Neapolitan nativity scene, with more than 200 painted terracotta figures, returns to Gallery 203 for the holidays.

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On now All of November 2026

Preview: written before the show opened

Down in the lower scenes a shepherd called Benino is fast asleep. In Italian lore he is either missing the whole Nativity or dreaming it, and he shares the bottom of the cabinet with a monkey, a nursing mother and a man dancing the tarantella in a crowded tavern.

The crèche was made in Naples in the mid-1700s and fills a 14-by-15-foot Baroque cabinet with more than 200 figures, among them at least 50 animals and 41 items of food and drink. The Holy Family, the Wise Men and the angels sit up top. Below is 18th-century Naples: vendors selling chestnuts, shellfish and ricotta, a pasture, and a tavern hung with cured meats, the only holiday party in the Loop where the charcuterie is older than Chicago.

You get about 40 days a year: the silk costumes are too fragile for longer, so the rest of the time it waits behind a temporary wall. It is in Gallery 203 and included with museum admission ($32 for adults).

Look for

Benino, the sleeping shepherd
Search the lower scenes for the shepherd of Neapolitan lore who sleeps through the Nativity, or dreams it, depending on who tells the story.
The tavern instead of the inn
Where the Bible has an inn, Naples has a rowdy tavern full of locals, a tarantella dancer and an array of cured meats.
The street vendors
Sellers of chestnuts, shellfish and ricotta crowd a Neapolitan street below the Holy Family.
The upper register
Mary, Joseph, the infant Jesus and the Three Wise Men in embroidered silk, with a host of angels hovering over them.
The Wise Men's retinue
Visitors from the Islamic world appear only up top, in turbans and billowing trousers, set apart from the rustic Neapolitan clothes of the crowd below.