Museo Campano (Matres Matutae)
Capua (CE)
KnownHistory & archaeology
The story
In Capua the Museo Campano lines up the Matres Matutae, dozens of tufo mothers seated with children in their laps: fertility deities worshipped here in ancient Capua.
Access
Tue-Sun ~€6
More gems in Capua
Sacred artAbbazia di Sant'Angelo in Formis
Capua (CE)
On the slopes of Monte Tifata, above an ancient temple of Diana, the basilica preserves cycles of medieval frescoes that cover the walls like a painted story.
- Sacred art
Chiesa di San Michele a Corte e cripta longobarda
Capua (CE)
Palatine chapel of the Lombard princes, 10th century: you enter beneath a triple window of palm-leaf capitals and go down into a crypt that turns around a single squat column, where frescoes that resurfaced only in 1876 still survive.
CastlesCastello delle Pietre
Capua (CE)
The Norman keep of 1062 is made out of the Anfiteatro Campano: limestone blocks torn from the gladiators' tiers and reassembled into a fortress. Capua devoured itself in order to survive.
More gems: History & archaeology
History & archaeologyStatua del Nilo ("Corpo di Napoli")
Largo Corpo di Napoli
A river god reclining for centuries in a quiet square, whom Neapolitans call the Corpo di Napoli: he leans his bearded head among putti and a sphinx.
History & archaeologyCappella Pontano
Decumani
A small Renaissance temple on the decumanus, which the humanist Pontano had raised for his lost wife, still lined inside with Latin inscriptions dictated by his grief.
- History & archaeology
Sedile di Nilo
Decumani
On the corner of a small Spaccanapoli square survives the seat of the old Nilo quarter, where the nobles once gathered before the sedili of Naples vanished.
History & archaeologyPort'Alba
Napoli
A seventeenth-century arch cut into the walls leads to the booksellers' street, where stalls of second-hand volumes pile up among yellowed pages and the shade of the old city.
History & archaeologyPorta Capuana
zona Garibaldi
Between two cylindrical towers an arch of white marble opens like a Renaissance triumph, the old city gate facing the road to Capua.
- History & archaeology
MANN — Museo Archeologico Nazionale
P.za Museo
One of the world's great archaeological museums: here the Toro Farnese, the mosaics of Pompeii and the Gabinetto Segreto tell the whole ancient Mediterranean in a single visit.