Paleolab — Museo dei dinosauri
Pietraroja (BN)
KnownHistory & archaeology
The story
Here rested Ciro, the Scipionyx samniticus: the first dinosaur found in Italy, with its soft tissues intact, and the landscape of the Sannio as it was one hundred and ten million years ago.
More gems in Pietraroja
- Nature & hiking
Geosito di Pietraroja e il dinosauro Ciro
Pietraroja
In the limestone of a vanished sea lies Ciro, the small dinosaur whose internal organs are still imprinted: the fossil that turned this Matese plateau into a place for palaeontologists.
VillagesBorgo di Pietraroja
Pietraroja (BN)
A handful of houses clinging to the Civita, suspended over the canyon, where ham is still cured in the mountain air. The village lives in the shadow of its dinosaur, but it is the rock underfoot that tells of a hundred million years.
More gems: History & archaeology
History & archaeologyStatua del Nilo ("Corpo di Napoli")
Largo Corpo di Napoli
A river god reclining for centuries in a quiet square, whom Neapolitans call the Corpo di Napoli: he leans his bearded head among putti and a sphinx.
History & archaeologyCappella Pontano
Decumani
A small Renaissance temple on the decumanus, which the humanist Pontano had raised for his lost wife, still lined inside with Latin inscriptions dictated by his grief.
- History & archaeology
Sedile di Nilo
Decumani
On the corner of a small Spaccanapoli square survives the seat of the old Nilo quarter, where the nobles once gathered before the sedili of Naples vanished.
History & archaeologyPort'Alba
Napoli
A seventeenth-century arch cut into the walls leads to the booksellers' street, where stalls of second-hand volumes pile up among yellowed pages and the shade of the old city.
History & archaeologyPorta Capuana
zona Garibaldi
Between two cylindrical towers an arch of white marble opens like a Renaissance triumph, the old city gate facing the road to Capua.
- History & archaeology
MANN — Museo Archeologico Nazionale
P.za Museo
One of the world's great archaeological museums: here the Toro Farnese, the mosaics of Pompeii and the Gabinetto Segreto tell the whole ancient Mediterranean in a single visit.