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The Museum of Roman Ships in Nemi: the history of imperial vessels in the Castelli Romani lake
The Museo delle Navi Romane stands on the northern shore of Lake Nemi. Built in the 1930s to house the hulls of two vessels recovered from the lake bed, it was the first museum in Italy to be designed around its contents.
Two ships, two purposes
The two vessels were commissioned by Emperor Caligula in the first century AD. One was a floating luxury residence, the other a temple dedicated to the worship of the goddess Isis. The pine-wood hull was covered in lead, with a marble floor, and supported baths, pavilions, and other enclosed spaces. The two ships were sunk after the damnatio memoriae, with which Caligula was erased from history.
Five centuries of rescue attempts
The first to search for these vessels was Cardinal Prospero Colonna, around the mid-15th century, together with Leon Battista Alberti. In 1535, Francesco De Marchi determined the dimensions of one of the vessels. In 1827, Cavalier Annesio Fusconi recovered some pieces. In 1895, a diver recovered a bronze lion's head, and in 1928 the actual recovery of the ships began, ending in 1932. To pull them out, the lake level had to be lowered using pumps.
What can be seen today
The architect Vittorio Morpurgo inaugurated the museum in 1939. Due to a fire in 1944, the ships no longer exist, but one wing displays their artefacts. The other wing houses the finds from the sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis and the Castelli Romani area.
