The exhibition on the Byzantines, curated by Federico Marazzi (Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples), develops the historical phases following the Western Roman Empire in fifteen sections , dedicating a focus to Naples (a "Byzantine" city for about six centuries , after the conquest by Belisarius and his armies in 536 AD) and deepening the ties between Greece and southern Italy .

The scientific project of the exhibition was developed by a team of Italian scholars of Byzantine civilization, led by Federico Marazzi himself and made up of Lucia Arcifa, Ermanno Arslan, Isabella Baldini, Salvatore Cosentino, Edoardo Crisci, Alessandra Guiglia, Marilena Maniaci, Rossana Martorelli , Andrea Paribeni and Enrico Zanini . Several topics were addressed - the structure of power and the state; urban and rural settlement; cultural exchanges; religiosity; the arts and expressions of both literary and administrative written culture - over four hundred works on display , coming from the MANN collections and from loans granted by 57 of the main museums and institutions that house Byzantine materials in Italy and Greece ( 33 institutes Italian museums, 22 Greek museums including the islands, the Vatican Museums and the Fabbrica di San Pietro ). Thanks to the prestigious collaboration with the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, many of the exhibited materials are visible for the first time: several artifacts were found, in fact, during the excavations for the construction of the Thessaloniki subway . Other finds, loaned by the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the Municipality of Naples, were found in the excavations of line 1 of the underground .