Museo delle Navi Romane

The Museum of the Roman Ships at Lake Nemi preserves the history of two monumental vessels associated with Caligula. The purpose-designed building, surviving finds and reconstructions recall ships whose recovered hulls were destroyed by fire in 1944.

Why it matters

The museum connects an exceptional recovery project with Roman naval engineering and the archaeology of the lake. Material from the sanctuary of Diana adds the religious history of the surrounding territory.

What to notice

The two large halls were created to shelter the recovered vessels and retain a sense of their scale. Equipment, anchors, decorative fittings and reconstructed elements illustrate aspects of their construction. Models distinguish interpretation from the surviving ancient material. Finds associated with local cults and a stretch of the basalt-paved clivus Virbii extend the account beyond the ships.

Context and history

The vessels belong to Caligula's reign in the first century AD. The major modern recovery, directed by Guido Ucelli, brought the hulls from the lake between 1929 and 1931. Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo's museum was built in the 1930s to house them. The fire of 1944 destroyed the hulls; postwar restoration and later museum arrangements developed around what survived and the record of their discovery.