This tour includes a licensed archaeological English-speaking guide at Your disposal (private - only for you) for 2 hours
The National Archaeological Museum of Naples is fully equipped to welcome disabled visitors. In fact, the Museum is served by lifts with Braille signs, has a bathroom for the disabled, ramps connecting misaligned floors and good external access. Upon request, at the ticket office of the Museum, wheelchairs are available for free for visitors who might need it to fully enjoy the museum. Moreover the adjacent Metro station is equipped with tactile paving to assist pedestrians who are blind or visually impaired.
Built in the early XVII century, the monument housing this museum was chosen in 1777 as the perfect home for the immense Farnese collection of ancient artefacts.
In fact the National Museum of Naples owes its origin to the precious collections of sculpture and painting that Charles of Bourbon inherited from the Farnese of Parma. They were mostly sculptures that Farnese family had gathered in Rome during a period of fervent discoveries at the Baths of Caracalla and at the Palatine or inherited by the Medici of Florence. But Charles of Bourbon had also the chance to promote and assist at the early excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii, which were destined to become the largest outbreak of archaeological discoveries of the peninsula. So, to the initial core of the art-works of the Farnese collection, it was added an inexhaustible mine of discoveries from Herculaneum and Pompeii ruins : bronzes, paintings, mosaics. But they were added also finds of great archaeological value from other archaeological sites of Campania and Magna Graecia as Cuma, Pozzuoli, Capua, Nola, Paestum etc. The collection of bronze sculptures of the National Museum of Naples is of unsurpassed beauty. A group of 60 and more statues and busts in bronze comes from the Villa dei Papiri of Herculaneum, plus the bronzes arriving from the houses of Pompeii (like the statue of Apollo Citaredo from the house of Citharist, and the portrait of Lucio Cecilio Giocondo). Next to the bronzes there are also findings so-called minor: the precious pottery coming from the houses of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the pieces of jewellery from the graves of Cuma etc.
In addition to sculptures and furniture, the Naples Museum gives us a wonderful testimony of the two fundamental arts of the ancient house decoration: mosaic and painting. The collection of mosaics, almost exclusively made up of the mosaics from Pompeii and Herculaneum ruins, is the most valuable and most complete collection of mosaic in the world with such illustrious examples as the grand mosaic of the Battle of Alexander found in the noble House of the Faun in Pompeii. But it is mainly in the wall painting that the National Archaeological Museum of Naples best expresses its great wealth. In the museum one can find the paintings of the three cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabia that were buried in the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79 AD. These paintings expressed the best of the ancient painting of the Roman empire that has survived until today. The collection comes from the habit, followed for a long time in the excavations, to detach the paintings from the walls that supported them, so as not to leave the paintings in situ for reasons of preservation and for the desire to enrich the new museum of Naples. This habit has deprived many houses of the ancient Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabia of their most beautiful decorations, but the preservation of the paintings has been great because in this way they were saved from weathering and moisture. And today this collection of ancient paintings is the most valuable in the world. A so great and complex museum, two centuries old, has naturally undergone several changes over the years. The National Archaeological Museum of Naples is a large museum of the Mediterranean civilization. Historical and political events, volcanic cataclysms and dynastic successions have contributed to provide this museum with the richest and the most varied treasure of art and civilization that the ancient world has ever left.
The lift of the museum will help disabled reach the different floors to visit the various collections.
