Post-War Reconstruction of Nemi Ships Museum: Pushing the Boundaries Between Museography and Memorialization

Abstract

The Nemi Ships Museum is an early and unique example of museum architecture for large archaeological objects, built to display the two great ancient Roman ships extracted from Lake Nemi near Rome between 1928 and 1932. The history of the Museum is a very relevant case study of the development of fascist propaganda through heritage politics, archaeology, museography, and construction. During WWII, the Museum was damaged by a devastating fire that destroyed the ships. The Museum was renovated after the war. The new exhibition, opened in 1953, had to deal with the huge cultural loss with a combine strategy of in-scale reconstruction of the ships and the original setting, display of the surviving finds, and memorialisation of the destruction. Nemi Ships Museum new setting can be contextualised within the general process of museum reconstruction in post-war Italy.

Keywords

• nemi ships museum
• war
• fire
• ruins
• reconstruction
• luigi tursini
• vittorio morpurgo
• furio fasolo
• elio petri