The mosaic decorated the bridge of one of two barges that were recovered from the bottom of the lake between 1929 and 1932
Credit: Lucia LB. Bianco
For centuries, it lay in the mud on the bed of a volcanic lake in Italy, before being dredged up in an operation ordered by Mussolini, and then illegally exported to the United States, where it ended up being used for decades as a coffee table in a Manhattan apartment.
After a distinctly chequered history, a multi-coloured mosaic that adorned a vast pleasure barge built for the despotic and possibly psychotic emperor Caligula 2,000 years ago finally returned home on Thursday.
The intricate mosaic, which would have been stepped on by the emperor himself during lavish parties – and possibly orgies – on board the huge vessel, was unveiled in a museum that sits on the shores of Lake Nemi, which lies in the Alban Hills south-east of Rome.
The mosaic decorated the bridge of one of two barges that were recovered from the bottom of the lake between 1929 and 1932 on the express orders of Il Duce, who styled himself as a modern-day emperor and was keen to relive the glory that was Rome.
The barges were huge – around 240ft long and 80ft wide – with one reputed to have included a temple to the goddess Diana.
Caligula's floating palace on Lake Nemi
Credit: Mary Evans Picture Library
There have long been claims that a third barge may still lie on the lake bed, and the recovery of the mosaic has rekindled hopes of finding it.
In order to recover the two existing barges in the 1930s, Mussolini ordered much of the lake to be dredged.
The mysterious third barge could lie in a part of the lake that was not emptied. A sonar survey conducted a few years ago found no trace of it, but that does not mean it does not exist, said Emiliano Belmonte, from the town council in Nemi.
“Centuries ago there was a rockslide on that side of the lake which means that the legendary third ship could be underneath it,” he told The Telegraph.
“The sonar wouldn’t have been able to penetrate beneath the rock. We’re considering different methods of exploring the lake. The mystery remains.”
Alberto Bertucci, the mayor of Nemi, said there were reports dating back to the 15th century that a third barge could lurk under the water, with local fishermen pulling up artefacts from time to time in their nets. “There are clues that there is something there. It’s not over yet. These ships display the incredible engineering feats that the Romans were capable of.”
After the barges were recovered from the lake bed during the Fascist era, they were kept in a specially-built museum on the shores of the lake.
But in 1944, as the Allies pushed north in the liberation of Italy, the museum was set on fire, with suspicions that retreating German forces torched it out of spite. The wooden skeletons of the imperial barges were almost completely destroyed.
The fragment of mosaic, however, survived because at the time it was kept in Rome. It was photographed in 1955 in a depository but then vanished without trace.
It did not come to light again until a special unit of Italy’s Carabinieri police, which deals with cultural heritage thefts and trafficking, was tipped off that it had been illegally traded to the US and was being used as a coffee table in the New York home of an Italian couple. They said they had bought it in good faith in the 1960s from an aristocrat.
The effort to recover the mosaic involved a “complex” operation in collaboration with US police and prosecutors, said Major Paolo Salvatori of the Carabinieri.
The square mosaic was recovered in 2017, after which experts spent years cleaning the tea and coffee stains that had accumulated over the years.
Its unveiling in the Museum of Ships on the shores of Lake Nemi was welcomed by Massimo Osanna, the director-general of Italian museums.
“It’s fundamental to bring archeological artifacts like these back to their original contexts,” he said. “I’m very happy that it has finally been restored to where it came from.”
Caligula’s barges were not ordinary ships, but “floating palaces”, he said. They had hot and cold running water, mosaic floors and rooms for dining and sleeping.
During the recovery of the barges in the 1930s, archeologists discovered decorative bronzes in the shape of wolf’s heads, lion’s heads and the mythological figure Medusa.
A Renaissance imagination of what Caligula may have looked like
Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Caligula reigned as emperor from 37 to 41 AD, when he was assassinated by members of the Praetorian Guard.
Famously eccentric, if not psychotic, he was reputed to have dressed as a woman, slept with his sisters and appointed his horse as a consul.
His pleasure ships are said to have been decorated with gold, marble and purple silk.
According to Suetonius, the Roman historian, Caligula’s barges featured “ten banks of oars, the poops of which blazed with jewels…(they were) filled with ample baths, galleries and saloons and supplied with a great variety of vines and fruit trees”.
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