Museo Campano (Matres Matutae)
Capua (CE)
KnownMuseums
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.
◆ CastlesCastello delle Pietre
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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.
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Chiesa di San Michele a Corte e cripta longobarda
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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.
More gems: Museums
MuseumsMANN — Museo Archeologico Nazionale
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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.
◆ MuseumsAntiquarium
Boscoreale
The museum that tells of daily life at the foot of Vesuvius before the eruption, among carbonised loaves, farm tools and finds handed back by the ash.
◆ MuseumsMuseo dell'Osservatorio Vesuviano
Ercolano
The oldest volcanological observatory in the world, willed by the Bourbons in 1841, with historic instruments and mineral collections, looking out over the slopes of Vesuvius.
◆ MuseumsMuseo Correale
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In the family villa of the Correale counts: porcelain, inlaid wood and eighteenth-century views of Naples, and a garden that runs down to a belvedere over the sea.
MuseumsVilla Lysis — Jago Museum Capri
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A 1905 Art Nouveau villa by the poet Fersen, dedicated to love and sorrow; since June 2026 it houses the Jago Museum Capri, with Jago's sculptures in the historic rooms high above the sea.
- ◆ Museums
Ospedale delle Bambole
Napoli
Behind a shop window in Palazzo Marigliano a craftsman mends glass eyes, porcelain arms and dolls' curls, in a workshop born more than a century ago.