We thought we’d seen a lot yesterday, but boy, were we wrong. We spent four hours today in the Archaeological Museum, and barely scratched the surface. I’ll try to give you an overview of our visit with minimal words and probably too many pictures.

First, some of the best frescos were relocated from Pompeii and Herculaneum to the museum to preserve them. These two examples give you a taste of what you can see.

There were also thousands of bronze pieces. This was a brazier used to provide heat (and beauty) in a wealthy home.

There were also many beautiful wall mosaics.

Here is another one that was nearly two meters high. Note the power plug at the bottom to provide scale.

You might think that is a fresco, but it is a mosaic. If you zoom in on a section you can see the detail.

In some cases the individual pieces were tiny – barely over 1 mm square. Jan put her hand near one mosaic (being careful not to touch) to give you a sense of scale and show how small the individual pieces are.

And then there were the floor mosaics. These are in the Magna Graecia rooms. The artifacts around the walls are from the Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily, but the mosaic floors are from various villas excavated in the area around Napoli. Amazingly, you can walk on these floor mosaics, though you do need to put protective covers on your shoes.

The previous picture shows that the floor mosaics go on and on and on. But now I’m going to show you just how many there are. And this is just a fraction of what you can see … and walk across.

I realize this may be a bit overwhelming but there isn’t any other way to show the scope of the mosaics. They are truly amazing.

There was also a small, but interesting section about gladiators. Turns out that the portrayal you see in the movies is dead wrong. (I know, who would have guessed.) It seems gladiators were more like today’s professional wrestling, with different gladiators assuming different personas to provide entertainment for their fans. This next picture is a piece of two thousand year old graffiti, where someone scratched a drawing of their favourite gladiator on one of the walls, preserved by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius before it could be repaired.

It’s almost Halloween so I’ll end with this wall mosaic that speaks for itself.