For our last day we took a field trip to the town of Nemi, an hour outside of Rome to visit the museum there which holds the remains of the Roman boats that Emperor Caligula built as floating castles/domains on the lake of Nemi.
This is the cover for the spine the bow of the boat. This museum is unique because it was the only one at the time actually built with the purpose of being a museum. Most of the museums in Rome were converted from old buildings, basilicas and churches.
The museum was built big enough to house the huge boats that were excavated from the lake. However, they were mostly wood and one night for reasons unknown the museum caught on fire and the original boats were destroyed with only a few artifacts remaining. The two boats were rebuilt from the very detailed records taken before the tragic fire in a smaller scale.
This the the end half of the model here. the balcony behind the model is what was used to view the original boats so you can imagine how massive the originals were!
These are tiles used to decorate the boat
These are pictures and documentation of the boats and their excavation process from the lake. After Caligula's reign, the next emperor tried to erase the fact that he had ever existed so all his statues were beheaded and the massive boats were sunk into the lake!
Now, the lake isn't too deep but the boats were so huge and fragile after so many years (they were excavated around the 19th century) so the process to get them back out was tricky and took a while. They ended up draining the level of the lake quite a bit to get to the boats!
This is a selection of the nails used in the boats. They were recovered after the fire.
This is a section of the marble flooring. These tiles were repeated to form a lovely floor in the boat fit for an emperor.
This is one of the anchors of the boat recreated from the records. I believe the metal bindings are from the original anchor but the wood is new, obviously!
These metal animals holding rings are originals from the boat and they are also the originals that door-knockers of the same design are made from. That was a cool tidbit to learn.
Next we went on a walk past the beautiful lake on the way to the sanctuary and temple of Diana.
The sanctuary itself isn't much to see as they are still in the process of recovering it, but the view along the way was worth it.
After that we had lunch overlooking the lake which was really quite scrumptious!! We had fish for the main course which was quite a treat.
More about the farewell dinner in my farewell/conclusion post to come.
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