Naples

Italians love many things - coffee, pasta, reckless riding on scooters through chaotic traffic, and Nutella. 

Before heading to Naples on Monday 6th March, we stayed at the Mercure Hotel near the Rome Fiumicino airport where breakfast was an amazing buffet of which this beauty was but one gastronomic delight. 

Once settled in Naples, we thought we'd pay a quick visit to the archaeological museum. From the outside it looked a bit run down so we figured half an hour, maximum, then we'd go find something more interesting. 

Inside was amazing! To the point of being a bit overwhelming. 

The sheer number of items was staggering, as was the detail of the statues. If we assume that only a minute fraction of ancient Roman artefacts survived then the scale of the industry at the time must have been huge. 

This being a family-friendly blog I shan't post photos of some of the more interesting statues, art, mosaics, pottery and assorted trinkets. Let's just say that Victorian prudish attitudes and modesty had yet to be invented! 

As noted above, the detail was intricate to say the least. We had expected the usual statues and busts. We were surprised by entire scenes carved out of marble. 

The other observation was that for the wealthy and famous , statues were memorabilia before the advent of portrait painting and photographs. The exhibition included several series of people as they aged, i.e. a bust of them as a child, then as a young adult, then adult, and finally an old adult. Amazing! 

In the end we squeezed a half hour visit into 3 hours, but only by skipping approximately a third of the exhibits. 

This set the pattern for the next few days. There is a lot of history here...