MANN Napoli and Museo Galileo Florence Collaborate on New Roman Technology Section Opening 2022

The National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN) has signed a collaboration agreement with the Museo Galileo in Florence to create a new Roman Technology Section, set to open in autumn 2022. The section will be housed in the Braccio Nuovo of the MANN, a 4,400-square-meter area across four floors that already contains a restaurant, café, and auditorium. The exhibition will feature around 100 artifacts and modern reconstructions of ancient machinery, including oil and wine presses, cranes, water wheels, and mills, selected from the MANN's deposits and built by Opera Laboratori based on designs by the Museo Galileo. 3D animations will explain the principles behind these technologies. The project is co-curated by Giovanni Di Pasquale, historian of ancient science at the Museo Galileo, and Laura Forte, archaeologist at the MANN. MANN director Paolo Giulierini noted that the section revives an earlier initiative by Amedeo Maiuri in the 1930s, which was later dismantled. The collaboration builds on a previous joint exhibition 'Homo Faber' in 1999. The section aims to counter the thesis of technological stagnation in antiquity, using archaeological evidence from Campania to show that complex machines were in use by the 1st century AD. The exhibition has a strong educational focus, targeting not only experts but also young people and schools.