The National Archaeological Museum of Naples

There’s something worth knowing before you go to the ruins: the finest frescoes and mosaics of Pompeii are not at Pompeii. They’re here at the MANN, moved to safety in the nineteenth century. Visit only the site and you see the rooms; come here as well and you see what was in them.

Don’t miss:

• the Alexander Mosaic from the House of the Faun: two million tesserae, the battle against Darius, and it is vast;
• the Dancing Faun, the bronze everyone has seen in photographs without knowing where it lives;
• the Secret Cabinet, the collection of Pompeian erotic art, which tells you more about that city’s life than any caption;
• the Farnese Collection, with the Farnese Bull — one of the largest sculptures to survive from antiquity, carved from a single block — and the Farnese Hercules;
• the Egyptian section, the second in Italy after Turin.

Getting there: it’s in the centre of Naples, and you get there by train, which in Naples is by far the more intelligent choice. The Museo metro station is underneath the building.