Naples

We've been in Naples for two days, and have seen pretty much all the sights.  Saturday we started with the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, which is full of treasures taken from Pompeii, Herculaneum and some other places during Roman times.  There are some impressive intact statues, such as this, the Toro Farnese.

The twin sons of Lycus and Antiope are tying Dirce, who seduced their father, to the horns of a bull, so that he can bash her against some rocks.  You can see Antiope standing in the background.  It's the largest statue group ever recovered from early Roman times.  It is (as many of the statues were described as being) a third century AD copy of a first or second century BC original.  This one was "improved upon" by Michelangelo and others after it was recovered in the 16th century.  

There is an entire floor of mosaics from Roman houses that would put to shame a lot of early Renaissance art for its mastery of dimensionality and perspective.  And another floor of frescoes, including something called "The Secret Room", which is all erotic frescoes, mosaics and statuary. A little bit of everything, though very focused on the male -- lots of huge penises, some attached to owners and some alone.  Men with women, men with men, men with animals, men with gods/mythical creatures.  

The top floor had an interesting sundial.  It went the length of the main room, maybe 40 ft, and was meant to show you the date.  Here is one end of the dial

And here it is, a few minutes after 1 (1 because of DST, not sure why it was 4 minutes "late"), showing the correct day of the year according to the zodiac:

You can't see it at this resolution, but the circle fits between the markings for two different days.

After the museum, we took the Rick Steve's walking tour, through a bunch of interesting neighborthoods, past palaces and churches.  None of them were really worth going into, but the outsides were impressive and Rick always has great historical tidbits.

That evening we were walking along the Bay after dinner (where apparently all of Naples strolls), and I caught this view of the water

Notice how rocky the shore is.

Sunday we took the funicular up to to Castel Sant'Elmo, a fortress that has been around for over 1000 years.  It's impressive as really old fortresses go, but mostly you go for the view.  It's at the top of the city and then the Castle itself is seven stories higher (by the way people at that time counted stories -- we would probably consider it to be 10 or 12 stories high).  Here is a view looking out over the port from the top

Next to the castle is an old (no longer in use other than as a museum) monastery, which the hotel receptionist told us was "not to be missed", but we mostly found to be ho-hum.  However, it contains a collection of Nativity Scenes that were quite impressive.  In the style that you see at the NY Metropolitan Museum at Christmas -- quite large figures, and many, many of them, representing townsfolks of all sorts of occupations and activities. 

Here is just one of the setups (though the most elaborate)

I was only able to capture a small number of the angels descending on the place.  It's almost like a "Where's Waldo" picture, where you could spend hours noticing all the details.

We found a lovely park, Villa Floridiana, which had a porcelain museum, but the tickets had to be purchased at the top of the hill, which was far from obvious, and the museum/Villa was way down the hill, and we weren't motivated to trudge all the way up the hill again.  Our trip back down to the hotel was an adventure -- Google sent us on a very quiet street, quiet because we went down 400-500 steps, so it was quite traffic free. 

Tomorrow morning we begin our hiking trip with a visit to Pompeii