I have been to... the Archaelogical Museum of Naples

 On our trip to Naples back in May, one place I was determined to visit was the Archaelogical Museum, which is just to the northwest of the old city centre. Many of the best pieces retrieved from Pompeii and Herculaeum ended up here, and the Farnese collection was once a 'must see' for aristos on the Grand European Tour.

The building is enormous and packed with stuff. You could easily spend all day here. It was also packed with school groups and other visitors, but the size of the building absorbed them. 

Augustus, presumably when he was a bit younger.

This is Balbo, prefect of Herculaneum. There were quite a few statues of him, retrieved from the wreckage of Herculaneum.

And some absolutely stunning frescos.

I really liked this one as it just showed everyday life. Roman art of this period has a very distinctive style. 

Very exciting, Roman wargames figures! Romans vs Barbarians, these are maybe 60mm figures?

This is Socrates, not someone whose bust I can recall seeing before.

Euripedes. Some of these busts are Roman copies of the Greek originals.

A Vestel Virgin.

Xeno.

And Hippocrates.

This rather larger bust in the 'Gallery of Emperors' is good old Julius Caeser.

And here is Athena without her lance.

This massive statue is known as the 'Farnese Bull' and it is just gobsmacking. It is hard to capture it's sheer size in a photograph. 

It is just enormous, and packed with all sorts of little details. Just incredible.

Heracles resting after his labours. 

And I really liked this (one of a pair) - "The Kneeling Barbarian". Presumably the platform displayed some sort of loot at one point. He is beautifully sculpted in mixed materials, and complete with trousers, barbarian moustache etc. He looks just like one of the figures from the Revell 20mm Gallic Warriors box. 

A rather fine "Mounted Warrior" who could grace any wargames table. 

And one of the centrepieces of the museum, "The Tyrannicides" - depicting the start of the Greek Republic after the overthrow of the monarchy. 

The original statue was cast in bronze around 514 BC but was stolen by the Persians, so a later version was made in 477BC and this is a Roman copy made of the original in marble at around 50AD. The statue is interesting in tracing the development of Greek art as the musculature is so well detailed, but the faces of the two heroes are quite primitive.

Neptune (?) with a cornucopia and a Sea Dragon.

Anyway, having run around the statues, it was time to head up the stairs to meet Alexander the Great and Darius at Issus.

Only to be confronted with this! Agh!!! The mosiac is lying on the floor behind that tatty plastic window being restored, and the museum hadn't even bothered to put a proper picture of it up in its place. If you  look through the aparture it is on the floor in bits surrounded by consevators with trowels. 

Well, there is one of the endlessly reproduced snippets. This is clearly the horse furniture the Newline figure is based on. 

And Darius looking a bit anxious. At least I've painted his hat the right colour. 

I was really disappointed about that, the Alexander mosaic is one of the most famous in the world, and it was just out of reach. The museum is fairly notorious for closing exhibits, removing them etc at short notice. Just my luck.

The other mosaics were just stunning though.

I'm used to just seeing fairly crude floor mosaics made with larger tiles, but these were just amazing and made from tiny chips of stone.

This one looks like a painting.

As does this one.

This dog is a bit cruder though.

Hippos, Crocodiles etc. I am always rather drawn to naive representations of "wild beasts". 

There were lots of other galleries stuffed with things, including this rather grand picture gallery.

Interior walls from the "Villa of Postumo" in Pompeii. There was a whole section of Pompeii domestic artefects.

And this rather grand 1/100th scale model of the (ruined) town.

Down in the basement was an excellent Egyptian collection, and rather less crowded than the museum in Cairo.

I was very taken with these archaic statues, dating from around 4,500 years ago.

Burial figures and their container.

The museum cafe offered, among other things, Pompeii Cake - supposedly based on a recovered recipe. It was quite doughy bread packed with nuts and dried fruit, but I don't imagine the Romans had a great deal of icing sugar to sprinkle over the top originally!

My wife is a big lover of art history, and we discovered that there was one of the very few paintings by Artemisia Gentilesci on display at the Church of Santa Chiara. Well, four trips later we finally managed to get there when it was actually open, and discovered it wasn't in the church at all but the monastery museum around the corner.

The monastery cloisters were absolutely exquisite, covered in painted tiles.

And tranquil gardens (with orange and lemon trees).

The garden was lined with benches covered in hand painted tiles depicting historical or mythical scenes. As with some of the Roman frescoes in the museum, many just depicted ordinary life. 

And the cloister walls were covered in frescos.

As were the ceilings.

The site had been heavily bombed in the war, but the nearby Greek ruins had survived and there was an extensive section of excavations. This is a Greek sauna.

And we did finally get to see Artemesia Gentilesci's 'Mary Magdalene'. Well worth all the trouble.

I was also very taken by this 14th century bible in the monastery library.

And this astonishing Nativity diorama! The Neapolitans are very big on both model figures (typically religious, historical or celebrity) and many of the churches featured large dioramas on a range of subjects. 

Anyway, despite the absence of Alexander, they were both very enjoyable places to visit and I'd recommend both if you should every find yourself in Naples.