MANN and catacombs

Today we went to the Archaeological Museum of Naples, in my opinion one of the greatest museums in the world.  Amongst other things, it holds the finest of the artifacts taken for their own protection from Pompeii and Herculaneum.  So really the only way to appreciate the true grandeur of the sites is to visit the buildings in situ, and then the contents in the museum.

My favourites are some of the mosaics – the skill and craftsmanship is amazing.  The creature in the bottom left actually exists – it is an Egyptian mongoose and apparently they are quite common up to the present day.

I also greatly like this – the sundial in the central hall.  There is a tiny pinhole high in one of the walls, and every day at midday a beam of light shines through it and strikes the exact date on the strip on the floor which is marked with the signs of the zodiac.

When you see all of this bound up together, the Greeks with their science and philosophy, the Romans with their architecture, engineering and law which brought the world together in a civilization the like of which had not been seen before; the Church which kept the lights burning and knowledge alive in the world when the darkness of barbarism threatened to put them out for good, it can be summed up for me in one idea “The West”.  Our culture, our civilization, our ideas, our art, our literature, our religion, our values.  These are what we stand for and we should not let the modern day barbarians at the gate overwhelm us, where ever they come from or whatever ideologies they represent.

Anyway, after all that we went to see the Catacombs of St. Gennaro which were a very long walk away up a quite steep hill with awkward rough pavements.  They were quite good but perhaps not quite worth the walk.

In the evening, we went out for dinner and R tried the famous “Pizza Frito” which is a local speciality.  Unfortunately it was not as nice as it looked.

The plate it is shown on is a full sized dinner plate, so as you can see it is quite big.  It was deep fried and contained about a pound of melted cheese and loads of ham – but nothing else so it was very heavy and greasy.  R took one for the team on that one, because he didn’t like it and neither did I so now I won’t have to try one.  I had a Marinara which was not bad and had about a quarter of the calories.  To be honest I have had enough pizza to last me for a while now.