Museo Archeologico Nazionale

The National Archaeological Museum of Naples houses for the first time an important exhibition dedicated to extraordinaries sculptural works that almost in three centuries of discoveries have been restored thanks to that archaeological miracle that is Ancient Herculaneum.
Ercolano, together with Pompei and Oplontis villas, was declared by Unesco in 1997 "Heritage of Humanity" because with its amazing ruins offers a testimony of roman life and society with plenty of particulars and quality of preservation uniques in the world. The very high temperatures caused by Vesuvio's eruption produced in Ercolano a really original conservation phenomenon beyond comparisons, even in Pompei, besides frescoes and sculptures.

Ercolano restored the richest and more complete testimonies of the ancient world, concerned to aspects and subject of daily life and roman society ( religion, domestic ambit, clothes, furnishings): organic,carbonized materials of any kind, such as textiles, papyri, woods, edibles, all of them very precious sources for those "minor" and daily aspects of roman civilization.
The terrible eruption in 79 A.C., that in a night erased men and things, made possible the conservation of the whole city, still swarming with life: roofs taken off, walls knocked down, doors taken off their hinges, statues swept away, but almost everything recoverable, and first of all fresh and vivid like never happened in excavation carried out in other archaeological areas of the world, where the time has had way of crumbling gradually structures and original works, or in other cases of transforming, incorporating and often destroying them completely. On the contrary, for all the things that came to light in Ercolano, time didn't pass since that night in 79 A.C
In this exhibition for the first time are materially joined and presented to the public almost all the big statuary works returned by the city, that belong to different seasons of excavations history .

The centuries-old history of Ercolano's excavations, started by chance in the first years of 1700, lived a first season thanks to the impulse of the king Carlo of Bourbon who in the 1738 initiated officially the excavations in underground shafts. Particularly valuable works were moved to the Herculanense Museum, made out of the wing of Palazzo Caramanico in the Palace of Portici, that in the meanwhile king Carlo had made built so that high rank visitors and men of letters, by authority received, could admire them. To the season of Bourbon excavations belong chiefly the Theatre, Papyrus Villa, the Basilica Noniana, the Augusteum, and the imposing sculptural series that , moved in 1822 from the dall'Herculanense Museum to Palazzo degli Studi in Naples, today National Archaeological Museum property of the State, now are for the first time joined and presented to the public in all their magnificence.

Author of the grand and systematic excavation project under the open sky and the contextual restoration was Amedeo Maiuri, who between the 1927 and 1958, stressed the importance of the major part of the actual archaeological park. In the excavation of the ancient Ercolano Amedeo Maiuri put in conrete form his idea to offer to visitors a suggestive example of a city-museum and to made it real he arranged little Antiquarium in Casa del Bel Cortile and replaced a lot of objects in site, even at the cost of a little betrayal as regards the real context of findings.

All the works coming from these excavations stay in Ercolano together with those coming from the excavations of the last twenty years, such as the loricate statue of Nono Balbo, the wonderful archaistic relieves, peplophoros and the Amazon from the area of Papyrus Villa. These sculptures will be all displayed at the Antiquarium which opening to the public is expected for the end of 2009.
On the occasion of the exhibition, the monumental atrium of the museum regain his ancient honour, reliving as expositive area.
The route of the exhibition, that includes more than 150 works, consists of different sections marked out by a scenographic play of light, that symbolize the distance between immortal life of gods and frailness of human life. The exposition starts indeed with a bright light that light up the figures of gods, heroes and imperial dynasty[...]

[...]The last section, dedicated to textiles from Ercolano was inspired by the discovery through the Special Superintendence for archaeological goods of Naples and Pompei. In the ambit of the excavation of Papyrus Villa and Insula Occidentalis was discovered, in July 2007, a shapeless mass of organic material, a fabric, maybe hemp, that will be presented for the first time to visitors. On the occasion will be displayed also a reduced, but meaningful, selection of textiles coming from Ercolano an Pompei, which are part of a collection from the National Archaeological Museum of Naples: the greatest collection of Roman world, consisting in 180 textile finds.

The exhibition of textile finds will be integrated with an iconographical repertoire made up of sculptures and vesuvian frescoes, that will allow visitors to see the textiles in their context of use: clothes.

E-mail: archeona@arti.beniculturali.it
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Ercolano. Three centureis of discoveries

from October 16, 2008 to April 13, 2009