The 6 most beautiful museums to visit in the historic center of Naples
To get to know the true soul of Naples, it is necessary to go to the discovery of the wonderful ancient center of the city. From the museums (among the most important in the world) to the ancient squares, from the churches (more than 200 of them reside here) to the Greek-Roman remains kept in the Neapolitan subsoil, NapoliToday takes you on a tour to discover the most ancient and authentic Naples. After the list of the most evocative ‘visitable’ hypogea, we have compiled a list of Neapolitan museums to visit at least once in a lifetime.
National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN)
The National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN) is one of the most important archaeological museums in the world. The birth of the collections it houses are thanks to the King of Naples Carlo di Borbone (on the throne since 1734) who promoted the exploration of the Vesuvian cities buried by the eruption of 79 AD (started in 1738 in Herculaneum, in 1748 in Pompeii) and the creation of a Farnesian Museum in Naples, transferring part of the collection inherited from her mother Elisabetta Farnese from the residences of Rome and Parma. Subsequently, his son Ferdinando IV gathered in the current building, built at the end of 1500, the two nuclei of the Farnese Collection and of the collection of Vesuvian finds already exhibited in the Herculaneum Museum inside the Royal Palace of Portici. From 1777 the building was the subject of a restructuring and expansion plan, and with the return of the Bourbons to Naples in 1816 it assumed the name of Real Bourbon Museum. Conceived as a universal museum, it housed institutes and laboratories (the Royal Library, the Papyrus Academy), Drawing in other locations in 1957. The collections of the Museum, which became National in 1860, have been enriched with the acquisition of finds from excavations in the sites of Campania and Southern Italy and from private collecting. Today it houses a very large section of the Greco-Roman civilizations with numerous finds recovered from Pompeii, Herculaneum and Rome, among which the Farnese collection, also a very important Egyptian section (the largest in Italy after the Turin museum), and a very interesting topographical section that documents the history of the main archaeological sites in Campania.
Colomba: Piazza Museo, 19