My Trip to Europe 2013: Napoli

Naples, or Napoli as the Italians say it, was founded by Greeks over 2500 years ago. They called it Neopolis, New City. Today it's a gritty but bustling place, not so overrun with tourists as Rome.

Napoli. Birthplace of pizza!

Plenty of grafitti, all right. But what's that?

They prefer gigantic doors and windows:

Here's a hoot: you can buy toilet paper emblazoned with your (least) favorite politician!

Museum of Archaeology

Many of the antiquities of Rome were lost to plunderer between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. In the mid 1500s the Farnese family owned fields and vineyards around the Palatine hill, once covered with Roman palaces.

They began excavating a certain area for garden decorations, which turned out to hold many treasures: it had been the Baths of Caracalla. Over the years the politically-powerful Farnese family enlarged their collection, which eventually was mostly moved to Napoli, now housed in the Museum of Archaeology. It's really kind of mind-blowing.

This is Hadrian (conquered England)

Julius Ceasar

Aphrodite

Hercules after a tough job

Pompeii
Another fabulous group of antiquities in the Museum of Archaeology in Napoli comes from the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which were quickly buried in ash from the exploding volcano Vesuvius.

The artistry and technical sophistication of the artifacts is astounding. It's fair to say the Romans in AD79 were on a par with Europeans 1500 years later, which demonstrates that knowledge and technology can both progress and regress over long periods of time.

Greek writings which otherwise would never have been known were recovered from papyrus rolls which had been buried and incinerated, using a clever technique devised by an Italian doctor in the 19th century.

This is a mosaic, with shards of ceramic so small it's like a painting. There are lots of these.