National Archaeological Museum of Naples

This museum holds what was taken out of Pompeii and Herculaneum — the frescoes, the mosaics, the bronzes — together with the Farnese collection of Roman sculpture. It is the reason the excavated houses look bare.

Overview

The Alexander Mosaic from the House of the Faun is here, two million tesserae showing Alexander breaking Darius’s line, and so are the Farnese Bull and Farnese Hercules, colossal marbles from the Baths of Caracalla. The Secret Cabinet holds the erotic material from the buried cities, kept locked from 1819 and only permanently opened in 2000. Upstairs, an entire floor reconstructs the wall painting of the Vesuvian villas room by room.

Highlights

See this before Pompeii if you can; the site is legible afterwards in a way it is not before. The Alexander Mosaic is under restoration in view of the public, which is its own exhibit. The museum is a ten-minute walk from the archaeological heart of the old city and is rarely crowded, unlike everything it came from.

National Archaeological Museum of Naples

Overview

Highlights

Location