Description
The Archaeological Area of the Santa Chiara complex is a Roman bath complex hidden beneath the monastery, in the historic center of Naples. It is visited together with the Museo dell'Opera, and shows how people lived two thousand years ago.
The baths were built between the middle and the end of the 1st century AD, just outside the walls of the Greco-Roman city, in a district of houses and public buildings. They cover over 900 square meters, with a layout similar to those of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
You can make out the pool, originally covered, and the courtyard that served as a gym. Beside them, the bath rooms: the laconicum for hot, dry air, the tepidaria and perhaps a frigidarium for cold water.
Don't miss the little brick columns that held up the raised floor: beneath it flowed the hot air of the hypocaust.
The Museo dell'Opera, opened in 1995, displays 4th-century amphorae and a 2nd-3rd-century Corinthian capital, found in the excavations. There are also 14th-century sculptures, reliefs by Tino di Camaino and tombs by Sanmartino.
The museum also gives access to the cloisters, including the famous majolica cloister of the Poor Clares. The route also includes the sacristy and the nuns' choir.
The bath complex kept its function until late antiquity. It was absorbed into the city walls with the expansion of 440 AD and then buried, until the bombings of World War II, which hit the monastery, brought it back to light.
The museum has four rooms: archaeology, history, relics and marbles. In the history room are a 17th-century convent wheel, a 14th-century basin and two majolica vases designed by Vaccaro for the cloister, the only survivors. In the reliquary room is the bust of the Ecce Homo sculpted by Giovanni da Nola in 1520.
Two thousand years ago the Neapolitans came here to the baths, long before the Poor Clares arrived.
The baths were built between the middle and the end of the 1st century AD, just outside the walls of the Greco-Roman city, in a district of houses and public buildings. They cover over 900 square meters, with a layout similar to those of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
You can make out the pool, originally covered, and the courtyard that served as a gym. Beside them, the bath rooms: the laconicum for hot, dry air, the tepidaria and perhaps a frigidarium for cold water.
Don't miss the little brick columns that held up the raised floor: beneath it flowed the hot air of the hypocaust.
The Museo dell'Opera, opened in 1995, displays 4th-century amphorae and a 2nd-3rd-century Corinthian capital, found in the excavations. There are also 14th-century sculptures, reliefs by Tino di Camaino and tombs by Sanmartino.
The museum also gives access to the cloisters, including the famous majolica cloister of the Poor Clares. The route also includes the sacristy and the nuns' choir.
The bath complex kept its function until late antiquity. It was absorbed into the city walls with the expansion of 440 AD and then buried, until the bombings of World War II, which hit the monastery, brought it back to light.
The museum has four rooms: archaeology, history, relics and marbles. In the history room are a 17th-century convent wheel, a 14th-century basin and two majolica vases designed by Vaccaro for the cloister, the only survivors. In the reliquary room is the bust of the Ecce Homo sculpted by Giovanni da Nola in 1520.
Two thousand years ago the Neapolitans came here to the baths, long before the Poor Clares arrived.