Naples' Archaeological Museum or Capodimonte: which collection is where

The short answer

The National Archaeological Museum and Capodimonte are easier to choose between once they are seen as one museum's holdings split in 1957. The National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN) keeps the antiquities. Capodimonte, a Bourbon palace on the hill of the same name, keeps the paintings. MANN's own history page dates the split: in 1957 all its paintings were transferred to the Museum of Capodimonte, leaving MANN a purely archaeological museum.[1] The national tourism portal tells the same story from the other side, saying the palace opened as a museum in 1957 after the medieval and modern art collections arrived from MANN.[11]

XTOUR's reading: if the reason for a trip to Naples is Pompeii, Herculaneum or Roman sculpture, MANN is the museum that holds what was taken from those sites. If it is Renaissance and Neapolitan painting, the Bourbon royal apartments or contemporary art, it is Capodimonte.

How one royal collection became two museums

Both museums go back to the same king. MANN's history page credits Charles of Bourbon, who took the throne of Naples in 1734, with promoting the excavation of the towns buried in AD 79 and with moving part of the Farnese collection he had inherited from his mother to Naples. His son Ferdinand IV chose MANN's building, a former cavalry barracks and university seat, to house both the Farnese collection and the finds from the Vesuvian towns. The museum opened officially as the Real Museo Borbonico in 1816 and became the National Museum after 1860.[1]

Capodimonte began as the palace meant for the same inheritance. According to the national tourism portal, Charles commissioned Giovanni Antonio Medrano in 1738 to build it on the Capodimonte hill for the art he had inherited from Elisabetta Farnese, and Antonio Niccolini completed it under Ferdinand II in 1830.[11]

The official pages tell the Farnese journey differently. Campania's regional culture site says Charles brought the Farnese collection with him to Naples in 1735.[12] MANN's Farnese page says it was Ferdinand IV who organised the actual transfer of the collection to Naples, where its marbles joined the Vesuvian finds.[6] XTOUR does not reconcile the two accounts.

MANN: the antiquities

MANN's collection pages describe what a visitor goes for:

• The Vesuvian finds. The frescoes gallery covers Roman wall painting from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD, from Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae, Boscoreale and Boscotrecase. The page explains that in the first Bourbon excavations paintings were pulled from house walls and framed like pictures, and that some of the houses they came from are not easily identifiable in Pompeii today.[8]
• The Villa dei Papiri. A gallery for one villa outside ancient Herculaneum, dug in the 18th century through tunnels in rock 27 metres deep. MANN describes its bronzes, among them the runners, the resting Hermes and the drunken satyr, as the most significant surviving group of Roman bronze sculpture.[7]
• The Farnese collection. Ancient marbles and gems assembled by the Farnese family from the 16th century, including colossal statues such as the Hercules and the Bull found at the Baths of Caracalla from 1545, with a separate gallery for the gems.[6]
• The Alexander Mosaic. Found in 1831 in the House of the Faun at Pompeii and moved to Naples in 1844 and 1845, it is the subject of a two-phase restoration project.[9] MANN's home page says it is not on display while the restoration lasts.[2]

Campania's Artecard pass describes MANN's three main sections as the Pompeian, Farnese and Egyptian collections. The same page mentions "Stazione Neapolis", finds from the metro excavations shown in the Museo station of Line 1 below the museum.[14]

MANN's gallery schedule for autumn 2026

MANN is in the middle of renovation works, and its home page warns that some galleries or rooms are temporarily closed.[2] Its English schedule of open rooms, valid until 30 November 2026, says:[3]

• the Mosaic collection and the Secret Cabinet are closed for refurbishment from 21 September to 30 November 2026, and the Epigraphic collection is closed;[3]
• the Villa dei Papiri and Numismatic galleries have restricted hours, and Magna Graecia and the upper levels of Prehistory alternate between mornings and afternoons on set days;[3]
• galleries may close without notice for safety reasons, and the page says no refunds are given when that happens.[3]

Several MANN pages do not agree with one another, and the differences matter if you are going for one room:

• The home page says the Alexander Mosaic can be watched being restored from two observation points in the Mosaics Collection, while the schedule lists the Mosaic collection as closed until 30 November.[3][2]
• On free-admission days, the ticket page closes the Egyptian Collection, the Secret Cabinet and Magna Graecia, while the schedule names only the Egyptian and Magna Graecia galleries.[3][5]
• The Italian version of the schedule lists different afternoon times for the rotating galleries and a different set of always-open sections from the English one.[3][4]
• The national tourism portal names the Epigraphic Collection among MANN's main attractions; MANN's own schedule lists it as closed.[3][10]

The home page also says that since 5 February 2025 the entrance and ticket office have been moved from the main door to the western door during building works.[2] MANN's ticket page gives Tuesday as the closing day, with listed exceptions when a Tuesday is a public holiday, and says every ticket covers both the permanent galleries and temporary exhibitions.[5]

Capodimonte: the paintings, the palace and the park

The national tourism portal describes about 20,000 objects on three floors.[11] On the main floor are the Royal Apartment in the south wing and, in the opposite wing, the Farnese Gallery of paintings, sculpture, drawings and precious objects in 23 rooms arranged by date. The portal also lists a porcelain gallery, the Neapolitan gallery on the second floor, four rooms of the d'Avalos collection, a 19th-century gallery and, on the second and third floors, the contemporary art collection, which it says began in 1978 with a work left by Alberto Burri.[11] The Artecard page names Titian, Raphael, Caravaggio, Bruegel the Elder and Jusepe de Ribera among the painters in the Farnese and Neapolitan collections.[13]

Capodimonte is also a park. The portal describes the Real Bosco as a wide area with sixteen buildings within its bounds, laid out after Charles of Bourbon chose the hill as a hunting estate.[11] Campania's regional site says the museum has had special autonomy under a ministerial decree of 23 January 2016, and that the palace was home to three dynasties: the Bourbons, the French kings Joseph Bonaparte and Joachim Murat, and the Savoy.[12]

What XTOUR could not read about Capodimonte

Capodimonte's official website could not be opened when XTOUR checked it on 9 October 2026, so XTOUR has not read the museum's own pages. It therefore says nothing here about Capodimonte's opening days, tickets, closed rooms or access to the park, and the descriptions above come from the national and regional tourism pages, not from the museum. The one entry fact XTOUR can attribute is the Artecard's: its Capodimonte page lists the museum as one of the pass's free accesses.[13]

Comparing the two

One pass, two museums

MANN's ticket page describes the Campania Artecard as an integrated ticket that includes museums, archaeological parks and public transport.[5] The Artecard lists both MANN and Capodimonte among its sites.[13][14] XTOUR does not say whether both museums fit into one day, because it has no travel-time data for Naples.

The buried towns themselves are separate sites with their own managers; see Pompeii, Herculaneum or Vesuvius compared and what the eruption preserved. Both museums are in Naples.