From 'La Mole' to Penge

On Monday once we got back to Naples from Cuma, and we had a few pastries and caffelatte (Adrian) and hot chocolate (moi) served by a very surly waiter in a cafe'/pasticceria, we went to the Museo Nazionale at around 5 pm (it's open until 7:30 pm).

We both loved it! 
It is a real treasure trove of Roman art and it was delightfully empty of visitors - indeed we were the only people in most rooms.
Even the normally crowded 'Gabinetto secreto' was empty apart from a couple of people on their way out.
There were not even many attendants and they all seemed rather busy chatting to each other.

(The 'secret cabinet' houses a collection of erotic findings from Pompeii that were for a long time off-limits to 'normal' visitors because considered obscene. The door to the collection was even walled up at some stage. Even now, under-14's on school trips must have written permission from their parents!)

The ground floor of the museum houses the bulk of the Farnese Collection of statues found during excavations in Rome in the 16th century and belonging to Pope Paolo III and his family (the Farnese).

It's simply fantastic! 









On the upstairs levels there are mosaics and frescos from Pompeii and Herculaneum and other sites buried by the ashes of Mount Vesuvius



My camera 'died' in the gabinetto secreto: one cock too many me thinks! lol

So no photos of the fabulous Salone della Meridiana (which was too dark anyway) or the giant 19th-century diorama of Pompeii...

For more pictures, including a couple perhaps not safe for work (although it's art), please see the slideshow.

I haven't 'blogged' about out Saturday in Naples yet: sight-seeing is such an exhausting and time-consuming business! Plus quite a chunk of time is taken by planning what to do the next day (using public transport has its drawbacks).
I am skipping Saturday for the time being and moving on to the first place we visited this morning (and leaving the rest for another time).

We went to the cemetery of Le Fontanelle in the Rione Sanità. The neighbourhood - apparently - is the 'real' working class Naples, and rather rough, I have to say.
And don't expect a pretty cemetery - the entrance is a metal sliding door: it could have been the entrance to someone's backyard.
The cemetery is a set in a former cave of tufa; the cave was abandoned in the 17th century and used for the victims of the bubonic plague first and then for many more epidemics up to the one of cholera in the mid 19th century.

The bones are stacked up and piled up against the walls but what makes this cemetery quite unique is a local superstition/cult that started in the second half of the 19th century.

People used to 'adopt' a skull and look after it, praying for the release of its owner from purgatory, hoping to get something back when the soul reached heaven.
This custom (started by a priest) went on for a long time until the archbishop of Naples forbade it in the 1960s. But it is certainly not extinct, judging from what is left there as offerings.

I have put the pictures behind a cut because well it's really not everyone's cup of tea. I have to confess that we were both quite glad when we left the place. I had cheese at dinner and I do hope that I'm not going to have nightmares! lol!

( Click here for the photos )