“The Greeks before the Greeks. At the origins of the Hellenic presence in the Gulf of Naples” is a project promoted by Procida Italian Capital of Culture 2022, which traces the origins of the Hellenic presence in the Gulf of Naples embracing the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, the Archaeological Park of Campi Flegrei and the Civico di Procida "Sebastiano Tusa", in collaboration with the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the Metropolitan Area of Naples and with the contribution of the Campania Region. The journey of "The Greeks before the Greeks" at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples it unfolds in the rooms of the Prehistory and Protohistory and Isola d'Ischia sections, where the artefacts on permanent display, with ad hoc graphics and educational devices that outline the thematic itinerary, dialogue with some finds never exhibited up to now.

The itinerary starts in room CXXIX with an introduction dedicated to the Mycenaean civilization, the oldest to have with certainty a cultural matrix that we can define as "Greek": archaeological sources, in fact, tell us that the Mycenaeans spoke an archaic form of the language Greek. In this space some of the "first visions" of the exhibition are revealed to the public: three Mycenaean vases found in the Aegean area, belonging to the very rich "submerged" heritage of MANN and acquired in the Museum's collections between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the twentieth century. In room CXLVII the narration comes alive: the most ancient contacts between the Mycenaeans and the area of the Gulf of Naples are presented through the testimonies of Vivara - on permanent display - dating back to the Middle Bronze Age and, for the hinterland, from archaeological materials from the site of Afragola (Recent Bronze Age), made available by the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the Metropolitan Area of Naples.

These finds are also among the "never seen in preparation": thirteen impasto vases, some of which reveal formal and decorative affinities with the Po Valley area, fifteen examples of Mycenaean-type pottery and two bronze fibulae tell us of intense relationships that existed between different areas of the Mediterranean. The itinerary continues in room CXXVII, where some artifacts of Aegean origin, belonging to funerary objects from the necropolises of Capua and Cumae, offer the starting point for illustrating the contacts between Greece and Campania in the early Iron Age. At the end of the itinerary (room CXXV) a focus on the island of Ischia and on the birth of Pithekoussai, the first episode of Greek colonization in the West, cannot be missing. The MANN exhibition is integrated into a tour that involves the Civic Museum of Procida and the Campi Flegrei Archaeological Park: the incipit of the narrative develops in Procida, dedicated to the role assumed by Vivara, during the Middle Bronze Age, in the network of maritime traffic active in the Mediterranean Sea basin, as an important commercial hub reached also by enterprising Mycenaean merchants; in Campi Flegrei, on the other hand, the story focuses on the foundation of Cuma, which represented the first definitive settlement of the Hellenic peoples in southern Italy. Here the Greeks planted a real city, legible in all its parts (village, necropolis, sanctuaries). The exhibition at the MANN therefore takes the form of a link between two different moments: a link which testifies how cultural contamination was at the origin of new historical and cultural paths in ancient times.