entry
May 2005
Next Stop—Neapolis!
If you go to the
mammoth National
Archaeological Museum in Naples, you get
archaeology —which is to say that if you eat, drink and
breathe archaeology, you will come out totally sated,
slaked and hyperventilated. That is as it should be. Yet,
unless you know how to find it, you will still miss an
absolute jewel of a small display on the premises. Beneath
the premises, really. At street level, beneath the steps
leading up to the main entrance of the museum, within the
entrance to the new "Museo" stop of the Metropolitana
(subway train line) is an archaeological exhibit derived
from the years of digging that have gone into the
construction of that subway. Artifacts, graphics and video
displays lay out the history of Naples and her earlier
sister city, Parthenope, from prehistoric times through
the 1500s.
Since
metro construction was begun in Naples [see "Further entries...", at
bottom of page], an entire generation of
Neapolitans has been born, come of age and is now busily
making more Neapolitans who are, just as impatiently as
their elders, awaiting completion of the metro. The entire
affair has produced times of great discomfort and stress
for the population: squares and streets have been torn up
for years on end; traffic has had to be rerouted; public
transportation has slowed to a crawl or dead stop; and the
noise and general confusion have been unbearable. Some of
that is due to general problems of engineering: trying to
interconnect a city built on a hill is particularly
difficult. Interestingly, those problems —building the
stations at the higher parts of the Vomero hill— are
solved; those stations are open.
The other
problem is more of a cultural one and is what this new
museum annex is all about: every time you stick a shovel
into the ground near sea level in Naples, you strike
archaeological pay dirt. Maybe it's part of the Spanish
fortifications (from the 1500s) of the Angevin fortress at
Piazza Municipio; maybe it's the actual Roman port,
itself; maybe it's part of the original Greek wall of the
city or a Roman imperial building at Piazza Bovio. Any and
all of that is possible and, as a matter of fact, all of
that has happened within the last few years.
Of the 20
stations meant to connect the highest area of Vomero with
the downtown area and the main train station at Piazza
Garibaldi and then the new Civic Center, eleven of them
are well above sea level. All of those have been
completed. Three more in the "lower city" in the heart of
town, the stations of Materdei, Museum and Piazza Dante,
have also been completed. All of that is up and running;
trains now connect the uppermost reaches of Vomero with
Piazza Dante. The remaining six stations are Toledo,
Municipio, Università, Duomo, Garibaldi, and Centro
Direzionale, all of which are at varying stages of
construction. The first four of those, plus the
finished stations of Museo and Piazza Dante have all dug
down into some piece of history, down into one or more of
the six significant layers of archaeology that lie below
the city: prehistoric, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Medieval,
and Aragonese/Spanish. That is what the new museum
represents and presents. The museum is, in fact, a
prototype "metro/museum." Others will open as the stations
themselves go into operation.
The entrance
to the new museum is what greets you as you come up the
escalator from the Museo station. You can either go left
and out onto the street, or call in sick on your
cell-phone and walk straight into this magnificent
display. (Do you even have to think about it?)
The top photo
on the right of this text is of the general interior of
the premises. Below that is a photo of one of the wall
displays; it is an aerial view of the construction going
on at Piazza Municipio, the square adjacent to the Angevin
fortress (on the right in the photo) and directly in front
of the passenger terminal of the port of Naples. The
Museo-Metro is concerned with explaining with graphic and
video displays what is going on at the unfinished stations
at sea-level along the mile stretch between the fortress
and the main train station to the east. This photo is
already out of date, since the road on the right side of
the square leading down to the port is now closed off as
construction bores beneath the street from the fortress
grounds to the center of the square, the site of the old
Roman harbor. Below that is an artist's rendition of what
the completed train station will look like as trains and
passengers move beneath what used to be the ancient port.
The last photo is of a scale model of a Roman ship, three
of which were recently excavated from the harbor and
removed for restoration. The plan is to return them to the
site, which will then house another fine little
combination of train station and museum.
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