A journey into the antiquities and memory of the Terra di Lavoro
Defined by Amedeo Maiuri as "the most significant museum of Italic civilisation in Campania", the Capua Provincial Museum of Campania houses and illustrates almost 3,000 years of history: a formidable treasure chest for learning about all the cultures that have contributed to making Capua a great metropolis since ancient times.
History
Established by Royal Decree in 1869, under the impulse of the Canon and Archaeologist Gabriele Iannelli, the Capua Provincial Museum of Campania was opened to the public in 1874, in the premises of a historic Renaissance palace that belonged to the powerful Antignano family.
The remains of a small church from the Longobard period, San Lorenzo ad Crucem, can still be seen. During the Second World War, a violent aerial bombardment devastated the city of Capua, including the museum, but fortunately the collections had been saved beforehand. A long and laborious reconstruction of the building began in 1945 and was completed in 1956. Today, the museum is owned by the Province of Caserta.
Heritage
The diversity of the priceless heritage collected in the 32 rooms of the museum perfectly reflects the succession of Capua's various cultural identities: from the Oscans to the Etruscans, from the Samnites to the Romans, from the Lombards to the Normans, from the Swabians to the Angevins, from the Aragonese to the Spanish.
The heritage consists of an archaeological nucleus, which includes sculptures, vases, bronzes, objects, stoneware and mosaics; an art-historical nucleus, represented by paintings, sculptures and relics; and a biblio-archival nucleus, which contains over 70,000 items of crucial importance for the knowledge of Capua and the Terra di Lavoro. Not to be missed are the collection of the "Mothers" and the "mater matuta" (6th - 2nd century BC), the surviving sculptures of the arch commissioned by Federico II of Swabia (1234-1239) and the coin cabinet (6th century BC - 19th century AD), a gift from the Garofano-Venosta family.
