The museum itself is built inside a palace from Naples' heyday, and full of artefacts that once belonged to the King that had come from places including Rome, Pompeii and Greece. Our first part of the day was browsing through the beautiful wall paintings that were taken from villas and houses at Pompeii and Herculaneum (this makes my inner archaeologist cry a bit, but life goes on). The sheer number of the frescos is just astounding, the colours are still so vibrant and the pictures still crisp and beautiful. Something I really loved seeing was the Alexander Mosaic on the wall. We had seen a replica of it when at Pompeii but it was evident that the mosaic was definitely better off in a museum and away from the open elements. That said, it was amazing to finally see something so famous in real life!!
After our look at the wall paintings, we headed down to the Farnese Collection, the personal collection of a wealthy Neapolitan family. The sheer amount of artefacts that these people had in their possession is ridiculous, especially considering only a fraction are on display. There was a hall of busts that was reminiscent of the Vatican Museum, and held the familiar faces of many great and not so great emperors and figures, including........ Another Domitian!!! We also saw our first Caesar. We all were feeling a little silly so we took self shots with our favourite emperors and posed badly to have a laugh. It is amazing how laid back staff are at these museums, especially given that as a whole our group was pretty noisy!!
After browsing through some other not so exciting things, we were free to run around Naples for the afternoon and then make our own way back to the hotel. I can definitely say that it was an experience and a half considering we got a little lost on the way back home, what with catching the wrong train, walking the wrong way and then ending up at the station we were not intending to.
Luckily for us we had some very helpful and nice people give us a hand in catching the correct trains, my friend Michael asked a man for directions and it turned out he was off to the same place as us, so he got on and off trains with us until we were on the right one. At this point we were a little stressed because we were late for a lecture that was meant to be happening that night, so when we arrived at the Ercolano station, which is quite a walk from our hotel, we flagged down a very nice taxi driver and were back at Villa Signorini in no time, and for the huge price of 2€ each! Was the cheapest taxi ride I have ever had! Despite the stress about missing the lecture, it turned out that only a handful of people were back, we discovered this as the taxi pulled into the driveway at the same time as a large group of our people were walking up the driveway.
It turns out that all the trains were broken that afternoon so we had been stressed over nothing!!
Our lecture was postponed which was good, because it was an excellent presentation from Jo Berry of the Herculaneum Conservation Project.
Day 10 was definitely one of my favourites, it was real fun seeing an amazing museum and shopping in a city as lovely as Naples. That said, I still prefer Rome to Naples, but it is very difficult to compare them to each other.
Attached are some photos of the day:
Also mum, there is a chicken mosaic from Pompeii, thought you would appreciate this haha
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