Deb's Blog: Italy - Day 4 Napoli

National Archaeological Museum

Besides the pizza...one of the other reasons we wanted to stop in Naples was to visit the National Archaeological Museum. This museum is known for housing ancient Roman remains, with collections from the Greek, Roman and Renaissance times and artifacts from Pompeii, Stabiae, and Herculaneum.

The building was built in 1585 as a cavalry barrack and did not become a museum until the 19th century.

The museum's classical sculpture collection largely comes from the Farnese Marbles.

Farnese Atlas

Heracles Farnese

One corridor of the museum

Heading towards second floor

The museum's mosaic collection includes a number of important mosaics recovered from the ruins of Pompeii.

The mosaics are intricate and some of the pieces are smaller than the head of a pencil eraser. Absolutely amazing work!

Close up view of mosaic


Further away

Another mosaic tiny pieces

It is hard to capture the detail with pictures, hard to show the actual tiny pieces. The picture below shows scale as Marcus is walking past. Again, the tiny mosaic pieces are smaller than tip of an eraser.

The picture below is of the Alexander Mosaic, circa 100 BC. It was originally part of a floor. To the left of the mosaic (in pic below), you can see the painting which depicts the battle of Alexander, the mosaic is what it use to look like. Some pieces are missing but just imagine this on a floor almost 2000 years ago.

The Alexander Mosaic

The painting


The mosaic

The museum is large and has many collections...Eygyptian Collection, with 2500 objects on display, Bronzes from the Villa Papyri, the Secret Cabinet, an extensive collection of erotic and sexual items mostly from excavations of Pompeii, and historical botanical gardens.

Grand Hall's ceiling

ceiling

Grand Hall

The Blue Vase, mid 1st century AD, Pompeii

Frescoes

This museum is well worth seeing. If you plan to go, allow yourself at least half a day to make sure you get to see each collection. A must see while in Napoli.

We wanted to get out to see the city in daylight, so we left the museum and headed for the streets.

One of the many streets we stumbled onto

As you can see, the roads are very small in Naples. Imagine these streets during busy hours (after 5pm)! Crazy!

After a few hours of walking, it was time for me to get my first pizza in Italy. I waited until this time to order pizza as I wanted my first Italian pizza to be a Napoli pizza. After all, pizza as we know it has its roots in the heart of Naples. The poor people of Naples were the first to eat pizza in the 18th century. The Margherita Pizza was introduced in 1889, with tomatoes, mozzarella and basil to mirror the Italian flag. This is what I ordered and it was amazing!!!!

My margherita pizza

In Italy, this is a single serving size. And I saw plenty of small, slender women eating a whole pizza like this by themselves, all of it! I do not understand how they stay so slim. If I ate like this all the time, I would be as big as a house!

Of course, afterwards we had to have gelato. Because my goal was to have gelato every day while I was in this beautiful country. After our pizza, I asked the owner where was the best gelato. I spoke to him in Italian and he understood and graciously told me where to go. We promptly made our way and my flavor for the day was fragola and limone. It was the best we had while we were there!!!

After several more hours of walking, we headed back towards our hotel, as we did not want to be out much after dark. We rested for a while and then found cafe with outdoor seating and had more food and drink. It is a good thing that I cut back on calories a few months prior to this trip. Wanted to lose some pounds before getting here, so I could eat and drink as much as I wanted while here.