Museums in Naples

The most important museum of Naples it’s the first museum in Italy for the extension of the collections, it’s consider one the most important in the world for Roman art.

Situated in Cavour Square, the building was built as a cavalry barracks in 1585. From 1616 to 1777 it was the seat of the University of Naples. During the 19th century, after it became museum, it suffered many changes to the main structure.

The museum hosts extensive collections of Greek and Roman antiquities. Their core is from the Farnese Collection, which includes a collection of engraved gems, including the Farnese Cup, a Ptolemaic bowl made of sardonyx agate and the most famous piece in the "Treasure of the Magnificent, and the Farnese Marbles.

The Archaeological Museum of Phlegraean Fields is housed in a fortress Aragonese, properly restored and adapted to the new exhibition destination, located on the top of the high promontory that closes to south the Gulf of Baia. The museum displays unique archaeological finds and extraordinary value from the Phlegraean Fields.

Among them the imposing “Sacello degli Augustali” of Miseno and the series of sculptures of the “Ninfeo di Punta Epitaffio” which was found during underwater archaeological excavations. The collection of hundreds of fragments of casts for sculptures and decorative works, referred to as the “Gessi di Baia” (Chalks of Baia) and all based on classical Greeks forms, and in use between the first and second centuries A.D., can also be seen.

In the historical heart of Naples, the three floors of the 19th-century Palazzo Donnaregina host the Madre - Contemporary Art museum: 7,200 m2 of exhibition space, with site-specific installations, as well as works from the permanent collection and temporary exhibitions.

Madre Museum is the witness of a story that made Campania region a crossroads of contemporary arts, oriented to studying and documenting the past through contemporary sensitivity and languages and so able of acting in the present and outlining the future.

PAN | Palace of Arts of Napoles museum's six thousand square meter site at the eighteenth-century Palazzo Roccella (Via dei Mille 60) host exhibitions and offer research opportunities, services and tools for learning about the artworks and leading figures of contemporary art ranging from painting to sculpture, architecture, photography, design, cinema, video art and cartoons.

The museum's program is characterized by a multitude of initiatives and a diverse range of opportunities to access art — through retrospectives, exhibitions, and cultural entertainment — including book presentations and conferences on topics of contemporary interest, backed up by a variety of activities and offerings.

The Capodimonte Musuem is one of the most important museums in Naples. It is located inside the palace of Capodimonte, the historical residence of the Bourbons of Naples. The Majestic art collection was initially composed of the works of the Farnese collection, a rich group of paintings belonging to the Roman and Emilian Renaissance, which includes artists such as Botticelli, the Carracci brothers, El Greco, Parmigianino, Raphael, Tiziano and Vasari, to name a few. Over the years the collection has been expanded with authors of the Neapolitan Baroque (Spagnoletto, Caracciolo) and Flemish art (Van Dyck, Rubens, Bruegel), as well as with what is perhaps the most important work among those exhibited at the Museum: the Scourging of Christ by Caravaggio.

The Zevallos Stigliano Palace is located in Via Toledo, one of the main streets of Naples. Built in the 17th-century by the will of Giovanni Zevallos, from which it takes its name, the palace has changed several properties over the centuries, until it became one of Italian galleries of the Intesa Sanpaolo group. The palace itself is a wonderful example of a fusion between the Baroque architecture of the initial project, with the posthumous modifications made in a perfect Art Nouveau style. In the museum you will see a large collection of Neapolitan’s painting of the eighteenth century, the Posillipo school and of the nineteenth-century Neapolitan school as Van Wittal, Groan, Van Pitloo, Palizzi, and Morelli. The highlight of the gallery is the martyrdom of Saint Orsola, the last painting by Caravaggio made in Naples just a few weeks before his death.