The one night we scheduled in Naples was primarily so we could visit the National Archeological Museum.  In and of itself, it wouldn’t be the type of museum that would bring me to the city, but I knew that visiting here would give much added context and background to a visit to the ruins at Pompeii that would be coming up a couple of days later.

The museum houses an interesting collection of artifacts from Pompeii – from large works of art taken from the site to every day tools and utensils.  We spent a couple of hours browsing the collections and it was a great investment in time that I can’t recommend enough.   When we visited Pompeii two days later, we could stand in the ruins and recall the mosaics, paintings and statues we had seen a few days earlier.

When we were at Pompeii we kept thinking back on the vividness of the colours in much of the art and how the pieces we had seen would have looked in context in the ancient city.  A great example is this painting from the House of Pansa representing fish and game.  At Pompeii, the House of Pansa is in a fairly poor state of repair – thinking back on this piece helped us visualize a bit better.

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