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– Collections
collections—
The Egyptian collection of the Museum is only second to the Egyptian Museum of Turin in Italy, in terms of the importance of the antiquities on display.
The vast epigraphic heritage of the museum was built up from the 18th century onwards, through both acquisitions on the antiquarian market and discoveries.
The Farnese collection is probably the most famous among Roman antiquities collections and it is fully rooted in the Renaissance milieu.
The collection of gems housed by the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, which boasts more than 2000 artefacts, clearly documents on the one hand the refined ability of ancient craftsmen and on the other the enthusiasm which animated the collectors of Italian and European courts since the Renaissance.
The gallery, covering the whole Western wing of the ground floor (about 2000 square metres), is hosted in the rooms decorated among others by artists Giuseppe Abate (1864) and Fausto Niccolini (1866 - 1870).
The mosaics on display in this section come from the private houses of Pompeii, Herculaneum and other towns in Campania and are unique examples in the world.
The Secret Room is a unique collection boasting 250 sexually-themed objects, mainly dug out during the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
The materials enshrined in the numismatic collection of the museum cover a large span of time, from the first coins minted in Magna Graecia to the examples issued in the Kingdom of the two Sicilies.
After Pompeii and Herculaneum were dug up and unearthed in the 18th century, the discovery gave a fundamental contribution to the knowledge of a quite original and almost unknown aspect, at the time, concerning classical antiquity: the daily life of ancient Romans.
Rooms 90-94 (XC-XCIV) are dedicated to sculpture and domestic furnishings from ancient Vesuvian towns.
The collection of frescoes from the Vesuvian area makes up a real manual of Roman mural painting, from the 1st century BC up to the 1st century AD.
The gallery of the Temple of Isis ideally exhibits all the materials from a single archaeological context, but also attempts to evoke the perception of the ancient monument at the time it came to light in 1764.
The scale model of Pompeii was showed to the public for the first time in 1879, offering a miniature view of the town, based on the evidence from the archaeological excavations carried out, up to that moment.
The Villa of Papyri was discovered in the suburban area of Herculaneum in the mid-18th century and was named after the extraordinary treasure of carbonized papyrus scrolls, which later turned to be mainly texts in Greek language about Epicurean philosophy.
Many ancient historians have handed down conflicting stories about the peoples who inhabited the Piana Campana, their dominating forces, and the myths linked to their origins: each author, in fact, was deeply conditioned both by the nature of the information collected and by the need of being understood and appreciated by his contemporaries.
The Magna Graecia collection exhibits all those relics of various origin and provenience which were excavated in the southern regions of the Kingdom of Naples, since the mid-18th century.
