The rooms splendidly decorated by artists such as Giuseppe Abbate (1864) and Fausto Niccolini (1866-1870), previously occupied by the “Museum of Statues”, formed the original core of the Royal Bourbon Museum, then the National Archaeological Museum. In them the history of Roman Campania is now retraced through the display of the marble and stucco decorations of the principal monuments of the ancient cities.
This volume is a guide to the new exhibition design, and the section that now opens in the west wing continues in the reconstruction of the context – in this case of discovery, not collectibles. It presents (in many cases for the first time) not only marble and bronze sculptures, but also wall coverings, epigraphs, architectural elements and furnishings that decorated public buildings and funerary monuments discovered between the 18th and 20th centuries in the excavations of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae, in the Phlegraean Fields and Terra di Lavoro (the modern province of Caserta). To these places are added a few but significant finds from other sites in Lazio and southern Italy, which was first a part of the Kingdom of Naples and then of the unified Italian state.