The National Archaeological Museum of Naples occupies a building whose history began apart from archaeology. Constructed in the late sixteenth century as a cavalry barracks, it was converted in the early seventeenth century for the University of Naples. Known as the Palazzo degli Studi, it housed teaching for more than 150 years. When the university moved in 1777, Bourbon rulers selected and enlarged the structure to receive royal collections, laboratories, a library, and institutions intended to display the kingdom’s scholarship and antiquities.

The museum’s collections originated chiefly in two streams. Charles of Bourbon inherited the Farnese collection through his mother, Elisabetta Farnese, bringing renowned Roman sculptures and gems to Naples. At the same time, royal excavations at Herculaneum, Pompeii, Stabiae, and other Vesuvian sites produced frescoes, mosaics, bronzes, household objects, inscriptions, and papyri. These finds initially entered separate royal repositories, including the palace museum at Portici, before officials gradually concentrated them in the former university building.

Architects Ferdinando Fuga and Pompeo Schiantarelli expanded and refitted the palace during the late eighteenth century. Galleries opened in stages during the French administration of Naples, and after the Bourbon restoration the institution became the Real Museo Borbonico in 1816. Scholars catalogued and restored the objects, while access remained shaped by court control and nineteenth-century museum practice. The Secret Cabinet gathered sexually explicit Roman material under restrictions that changed with politics, morality, and later scholarship.

Following Italian unification in 1860, the museum became state property and took a national title. Its library and art collections were later separated, allowing archaeology to dominate the building. Excavations and transfers continued to enlarge its holdings, while wartime evacuation protected many objects during the Second World War. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century campaigns reorganized galleries, conserved fragile wall paintings and mosaics, and reopened areas long used for storage. The displayed arrangement is therefore modern even when the artifacts themselves are ancient.

MANN preserves substantial sixteenth- through eighteenth-century palace fabric, not an ancient Roman structure. Its historical importance comes from the relationship among the Bourbon collecting program, early archaeology around Vesuvius, and the later development of public museums. The Farnese marbles were removed from ancient contexts long before arriving, whereas many Pompeian and Herculaneum objects have documented excavation provenances. Operated by Italy’s Ministry of Culture, the ticketed museum presents original antiquities inside an adapted and repeatedly renovated early modern building. Conservation laboratories and scholarly archives continue the research role that has accompanied public display since the institution’s formation.