With its Roman and Greek sculpture, this museum contains one of Europe's most valuable archaeological collections -- particularly notable are the select Farnese acquisitions and the mosaics and sculpture excavated at Pompeii and Herculaneum. The building dates from the 16th century and was turned into a museum 2 centuries later by Charles and Ferdinand IV of Bourbon.

The nude statues of Armodio and Aristogitone are the most outstanding in one ground-floor room. A bas-relief (from a 5th-c. B.C. original) in a nearby salon depicts Orpheus and Eurydice with Mercury. The spear-bearing nude Doryphorus, copied from a work by Polyclitus the Elder and excavated at Pompeii, enlivens another room. Also see the gigantic but weary Farnese Hercules, a statue of remarkable boldness discovered in Rome's Baths of Caracalla. It's a copy of an original by Lysippus, the 4th-century B.C. Greek sculptor for Alexander the Great. On a more delicate pedestal is the decapitated but exquisite Venus (Aphrodite). The Psyche of Capua shows why Aphrodite was jealous. And the Group of the Farnese Bull presents a pageant of violence from the days of antiquity; the statue, which is one of the most frequently reproduced, was discovered at the Baths of Caracalla and is a copy of a 2nd- or 3rd-century B.C. Hellenistic statue. The marble group depicts a scene in the legend of Amphion and Zethus, who tied Dirce, wife of Lycus of Thebes, to the horns of a rampaging bull.

The mezzanine galleries are devoted to mosaics excavated from Pompeii and Herculaneum. These include scenes of cockfights, dragon-tailed satyrs, an aquarium, and Alexander Fighting the Persians, the finest of all. On the top floor are some of the celebrated bronzes dug out of the Pompeii volcanic mud and the Herculaneum lava. Of particular interest is a Hellenistic portrait of Berenice, a comically drunken satyr, a statue of a sleeping satyr, and Mercury on a rock.

Open Hours

Mon and Wed-Sat 9am-7pm; Sun 9am-8pm

Prices Admission

6.50€ ($8.45)

Nearest station

Piazza Cavour station

Category

Museums

Website: http://www.archeona.arti.beniculturali.it/welcome.html