The Naples National Archaeological Museum is housed in the building that was destined to host the new Neapolitan university at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the palace, in fact became the seat of the Bourbon Museum, it was enlarged and received the collections coming from various royal palaces and subsequently, a large quantity of ancient remains from the Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabia excavations. Later becoming the headquarters of prestigious institutions, other collections arrived, including private ones, such as the Borgia and Picchianti collections, together with new finds from Campania excavations. After the unification of Italy, the Museum acquired an exclusively archaeological vocation and nowadays is one of the most important collections of antiquity anywhere in the world. The marble sculptures, on the ground floor, for the most part Roman copies of original Greek works, in some cases the only testimony to otherwise lost art, such as in the case of the Tyrannicide of Kritios and Nesiotes, the Policleto Spearman, the Farnese Hercules and the Farnese Bull, the originals belonging respectively to Lisippo and an anonymous school of Rhodes at the end of the second century BC. Another historical collection is that of the sculpted blossoms, partly coming from finds in Campania and in part from the Farnese collection. The Egyptian collection is also of great importance, begun with the union of the Borgia and Picchianti collections. Of no less interest is the mosaic collection, that includes floor fragments from Herculaneum and Pompeii. The more than 2,000 epigraphs, should be mentioned, as well as the collection of frescoes from the Roman period, the section dedicated to the villa of the papyri and finally, many other remains coming from the Vesuvian period.
|
NATIONAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF NAPLES
