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AlUla to Host Exhibition with National Archaeological Museum of Naples Masterpieces in November

AlUla, a major stop on the Incense Road, served as a vibrant hub for trade, facilitating the flow of precious goods like spices and incense from southern Arabia to distant markets. - SPA
AlUla, a major stop on the Incense Road, served as a vibrant hub for trade, facilitating the flow of precious goods like spices and incense from southern Arabia to distant markets. - SPA
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AlUla to Host Exhibition with National Archaeological Museum of Naples Masterpieces in November

AlUla, a major stop on the Incense Road, served as a vibrant hub for trade, facilitating the flow of precious goods like spices and incense from southern Arabia to distant markets. - SPA
AlUla, a major stop on the Incense Road, served as a vibrant hub for trade, facilitating the flow of precious goods like spices and incense from southern Arabia to distant markets. - SPA

The Ancient Kingdoms Festival, hosted in AlUla between November 7 and 30, will showcase a collection of remarkable artifacts from the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN) in a captivating exhibition: Masterpieces of the MANN.
The exhibition, displaying captivating objects from several Italian archaeological sites, offers a unique glimpse at the rich tapestry of ancient history, SPA reported.
Visitors will be able to explore the legacy of the infamous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD through artifacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum, Roman cities tragically preserved under volcanic ash. They will also have the opportunity to marvel at pieces from the renowned Farnese Collection, a cornerstone of ancient Greek and Roman art.
Masterpieces of the MANN finds its home in AlUla’s cultural venue, Maraya. This breathtaking place, home of the world’s largest mirrored building, is a stunning juxtaposition of antiquity and modern beauty.
The exhibition transcends geographical boundaries, highlighting the historical connection between ancient Rome and the Arabian Peninsula. The Incense Road, a network of trade and cultural exchange, served as a vital link. Roman emperors like Augustus, Trajan, and Marcus Aurelius played a crucial role in establishing and maintaining these connections, influencing both Roman and Arabian societies.

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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)

Thousands of tourists, pagans, druids and people simply yearning for the promise of spring marked the dawn of the shortest day of the year at the ancient Stonehenge monument on Saturday.

Revelers cheered and beat drums as the sun rose at 8:09 a.m. (0809 GMT) over the giant standing stones on the winter solstice — the shortest day and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. No one could see the sun through the low winter cloud, but that did not deter a flurry of drumming, chanting and singing as dawn broke.

There will be less than eight hours of daylight in England on Saturday — but after that, the days get longer until the summer solstice in June.

The solstices are the only occasions when visitors can go right up to the stones at Stonehenge, and thousands are willing to rise before dawn to soak up the atmosphere.

The stone circle, whose giant pillars each took 1,000 people to move, was erected starting about 5,000 years ago by a sun-worshiping Neolithic culture, according to The AP. Its full purpose is still debated: Was it a temple, a solar calculator, a cemetery, or some combination of all three?

In a paper published in the journal Archaeology International, researchers from University College London and Aberystwyth University said the site on Salisbury Plain, about 128 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of London, may have had political as well as spiritual significance.

That follows from the recent discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones — the unique stone lying flat at the center of the monument, dubbed the “altar stone” — originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles north of the site. Some of the other stones were brought from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) to the west,

Lead author Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology said the geographical diversity suggests Stonehenge may have served as a “monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”