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Published: April 30th 2008
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The Archaeological Museum of Naples Our first stop in Naples was the Archaeological Museum. We had established an itinerary with Marcello well before leaving the States, and one of our desires was to take the time to visit the museum where most of the antiquities from the excavation of Pompeii ended up. They are stored in this lovely building, and each floor and area we encountered within the museum was more fantastic than the last. What we came away with… the people of Pompeii surrounded themselves with absolutely beautiful, artful things. The villas of Pompeii contained amazing mosaics on the walls and floors. The wall niches and gardens were filled with the most ornate sculpture and beautiful vessels. The kitchens were outfitted with amazingly modern culinary tools with unexpected decorative elements. Oh, and they had erotica. Lots of it. There was a whole separate room at the museum that you had to pre-register to enter that contained a lot of the erotica recovered from Pompeii. Indeed, at the time of the excavation and the discovery of some of these items, Italy was in a bit of a quandary over how to address these artifacts with the rest of the world. The history around this indicates the
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Another portal to history... Pompeii awaits us Italians were more than a bit embarrassed! Yes, the Pompeiians were freaky-deaks! I won’t go into great detail as to some of the stuff we saw… it went beyond phallic symbols and to the next (and the next and the next) level. Fascinating stuff.
Bottom line, the city was wiped out from the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. and the people of Pompeii had glass, copper, ivory, paper… finery you would have never believed existed in those times. They had beautiful cameos. They had paintings in ornate frames. They surrounded themselves with the most elegant of items, and they built their homes - their villas - in a thoughtful, architectural layout, with interior courtyards and ornate gardens which would impress the most discriminating designers and homeowners in our contemporary times. We were nothing short of stunned by everything we saw at the museum and it was definitely a highlight of our 3+ weeks in Italy.
We followed the museum by taking Marcello’s recommendation for the REAL deal... a true Neopolitan pizza, and on a side street across from the museum we ducked into a little ristorante where there was a guy working on a marble slab, pressing
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The beautiful entry portico out the balls of dough into an imperfect circle, adding a few key ingredients, and sliding them in rapid succession into a woodfire oven. When the waiter came over, Tim and I had each selected a pizza to order (you don’t share a pizza in Italy, you personalize… and the size would equate to about a small pizza by U.S. standards). The waiter immediately pointed us to the “pizza of his region” which was called a “DOC” (District of Campania”). His recommendation was enough for us, we both ordered it. WOW. It was by far the BEST pizza we had in Italy and I'm pretty sure the best pizza I've ever had, period. It was simple: tomato sauce, buffalo mozzarella, and basil. There was even a little ball of buffalo mozz in the very center for a garnish. The cheese was beyond description, the crust was thinner than what we have in the States - but not necessarily only crispy - and with that earthy wood fired flavor, and the basil was the finishing touch. Yum!
After lunch, Marcello drove us up the windy road to Mt. Vesuvius. I can honestly say, while watching him navigate the back roads,
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This guy sits on an upper landing at the opposite end of the entry portico, guarding access to the museum's four floors the autostrada, and everything in between… he had a quicker way to get us everywhere we went. To recoup the time we would have spent driving ourselves around this unfamiliar place to the numerous places we had on our list would have been impossible. Not that we’re not intrepid, but it just became more and more apparent that we were getting the highest and best use of our time in having Marcello.
Vesuvius was impressive, the geology of the region was apparent at every turn, and the views back to the Bay of Naples from the road up there were stunning. At the top, there was a parking lot full of tour buses, a small concession, gift shop, and lots of porta-potties. We had originally thought we would do the one hour hike up to the caldera and back, but upon seeing the top, and with Marcello’s input on what is actually viewable once you get up there, we decided to save that hour for our next stop... Pompeii.
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