Fifty years have passed since 1969, when man landed on the moon, and the Archeologico celebrates this anniversary with the refined exhibition "MANN on the moon", scheduled in the Museum atrium from Thursday 18 July (presentation at 17, on the occasion of the opening of the MANNCaffé to the public) on 30 September.

The exhibition, curated by Laura Forte and Maria Lucia Giacco, archaeologist officials of the MANN, and by Alessandra Pagliano (professor Diarc-Department of Architecture of the Frederick University), starts from the story of lunar iconography in classical antiquity : twenty finds, in many cases coming from the rich deposits of the MANN, they retrace, in a cultured and evocative process, the different representations of Artemis and Selene.
In the setting, an imposing sarcophagus, an Apulian krater with masks, some silver lararium statuettes, the marbles depicting Artemis and Selene, the terracotta oil lamps and the frescoes dedicated to Endymion and Selene stand out.

In dialogue with the ancient finds, there are also precious watercolors and tempera by Giuseppe Abbate and Giuseppe Marsigli: these nineteenth-century works, belonging to the Drawings Archive of the MANN, reproduce the iconography of the Pompeian frescoes included in the exhibit.

In the ancient world, the Moon was also a natural instrument for measuring the passage of time; thus, in "MANN on the moon", visitors will be able to admire two extraordinary examples of ancient marble calendars: the Menologium rusticum , a very particular parallelepiped from the 1st century. AD (belonging to the Farnese Collection), which reported, for each month, the number of days, defining the duration of the hours of light and night, the phases of the moon, the list of the divinities celebrated, religious holidays; again, the Index Nundinarius, a table in which the dates of the nundinae, the city markets, were given.
These finds are accompanied by a rich explanatory apparatus, which is also explored by the videos on display: if, in the multimedia path "The sky above the MANN", created by Alessandra Pagliano with her research staff, the succession of the phases of the moon is reproduced , another video illustrates, also thanks to the suggestions of the original music by Antonio Fresa, how science and legend have intertwined, in the course of history, to represent the polysemantic and elusive nature of the Moon.

The foray into contemporary history and the extraordinary feat of Collins, Armstrong and Aldrin concludes this journey between earth and sky: the original photos and videos from the NASA Archive, the historic RAI broadcast with the commentary by Tito Stagno and the photos of 'Riccardo Carbone Archive mark the stages of a story that is also introduced into the Neapolitan reality. Flowing, of course, are the images of the launch of the Saturn V, of the first human footprints and of the American flag on the lunar surface.