Capri, August 2024. The new Archaeological Museum of Capri was inaugurated in Capri, in the spaces of the Quarto del Priore of the Certosa di San Giacomo, with the new exhibition “The Island of the Caesars. Capri from Augustus to Tiberius”.or”. 
The Minister of Culture spoke, Gennaro Sangiuliano; the Director General of Museums, Maximum Osannawho is also the curator of the project together with Carmela Capaldi of the University of Naples Federico II, and the delegate to the Regional Directorate of Museums Campania Luana TonioloRUP of the intervention.
The museum tells the story of the island at the time of its greatest splendor, at the time of the emperors. August And Tiberiusthrough 120 objects and works of art – some of which are true masterpieces – in a fascinating journey through 8 rooms, including precious marble sculptures, frescoes, rich ceramic and silver tableware, and architectural elements.
The heart of the exhibition are the finds discovered on the island, until now kept in the deposits of the Certosa itself and the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, now finally reunited and accessible to the public. The museum’s story is also enriched by numerous objects from the same period, mainly from the Campania area and until now kept in the deposits of the Archaeological Park of the Phlegraean Fields, the Archaeological Park of Paestum and Velia, the Archaeological Park of Ostia Antica, as well as recovered from recent seizures conducted by the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage. Among the latter, three beautiful silver cups returned from the United States and an evocative fresco from the Vesuvian area that reproduces a temple stand out.
In the name of accessibility, multimedia supports have been designed, including a touchscreen that, starting from a three-dimensional model of the island, allows you to explore the twelve imperial villas mentioned in ancient sources and to retrace their history, excavation and in some cases their fortune in the arts. The entire
The exhibition was designed to highlight the continuous and symbiotic relationship with the sea, the element par excellence that defines Capri, and which is visible from every room of the museum to the point of becoming an element that, together with the horizon line, defines the exhibition of the finds. The chromatic palette of the exhibition is taken from the painting by K.W. Diefenbach exhibited in the first room, which portrays the Sirens’ Rock and which also proposes the sea inside, in a continuous dialogue between the external nature and the interior of the museum. The spaces dedicated to the emperor’s otium also open onto the gardens of the Prior’s Quarter, bringing into the museum another fundamental element of the imperial residences, that of the nature of horti and viridaria.
“The new museum exhibition ‘The Island of the Caesars. Capri from Augustus to Tiberius’ ideally opens a new season for the cultural institutions of the pearl of the Mediterranean. The new archaeological museum at the Certosa di San Giacomo, which tells the story of the island at the time of its apogee with 120 finds discovered in various excavations and until now preserved in numerous deposits in the Campania region, will in fact enhance, together with Villa Jovis, the new institute ‘Museums and archaeological parks of Capri’, which I strongly desired among the new 17 autonomous museums. A decisive push to offer visitors a cultural offering worthy of the excellence of Capri’s tourism, recognized globally”, said the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano.
For the Director General of Museums Maximum Osanna: “Capri is the protagonist of a wide-ranging program for the enhancement of its cultural heritage, which the Ministry has undertaken with the establishment of the autonomous museum, with the ongoing reorganization of the Diefenbach collection and with the opening today of an archaeological museum entirely dedicated to the island in the Julio-Claudian era, a fundamental moment in which Augustus acquired Capri as an imperial property and his successor Tiberius settled there, bringing
the Administration and the court. Because of its central role in Roman times, the island awaited and deserved this museum which, rightfully, is part of the National Museum System, and which was made possible by the active collaboration of all the ministerial institutions involved, as well as the administrations of Capri and Anacapri. In addition to the finds discovered on the island, other objects are also being returned to public use, useful for completing the museum’s story, until now kept in the deposits of other museums or coming from recoveries conducted by the Carabinieri: they are historical-archaeological testimonies of those decades that brought Capri to the center of the Roman Empire”.
The museum itinerary. The journey begins with a first room dedicated to the wild nature of Capri, evoked by a majestic and solemn painting by KW Diefenbach, while a projection on the vault recalls today’s nature. Telling the 
life of the Caesars in Capri, in fact, does not only mean evoking the refined atmosphere of the imperial villas but is also a way to capture the spirit of a place suspended between sea and sky, which in the recent past has been a meeting place for intellectuals, fugitives and utopians. The second room tells the story of the Battle of Actium, following which Augustus founded a new political system in 31 BC. The testimony of Strabo of the start
with Augustus of an intense building activity suggests that the island hosted at that time more than one imperial residence, which the prince decorated with rare objects and antiquities. It is possible, therefore, that the twelve villas of Tiberius mentioned by Tacitus (Annals IV, 67) already belonged to Augustus. The villa in the locality of Palazzo a Mare-Bagni di Tiberio, and that of Damecuta certainly date back to the Augustan age. Room 3 shows the pomp and refinement of the imperial residences, as demonstrated by the everyday objects and furnishings of the residences in Capri.. Room 4 tells the story of a banquet that, according to sources, Augustus offered in Capri, the island he loved for the beauty of its landscape, the mild climate and the serene atmosphere that favored meditation. The island attracted him for its aura of sacredness and for the Greek tradition still deeply rooted in the population. It was here that, now old and sick, he spent four days benefiting from a miraculous improvement before death took him in Nola on August 19, 14 AD (Suetonius, Life of Augustus, 98, 1-3). He attended the exercises of the ephebes, to whom he offered a banquet during which he distributed gifts to the guests, demanding from them the maximum freedom of behavior. Room 5 tells the story of the Domus Augusta: in the political system created by Augustus, family ties and the management of the prince’s personal assets were inextricably linked to the functioning of the institutional machine and the management of the State’s assets.to. A portrait gallery allows us to get to know the members of the Julio-Claudian family and a large family tree allows us to grasp the complex family ties between 
They. Room 6 tells the story of living in a villa, in an open space between the sea and the gardens: here the owner of the house could surround himself with works of art and reproduce them in the architecture. and in the furnishings the luxury of oriental princely residences. Room 7 tells the story of Tiberius’ island, which hosted philosophers, mathematicians and astrologers. The hostile tradition handed down by historians, Tacit, Suetonius And Cassius Diois based largely on the anecdotes of the “Capri of Tiberius” which probably flourished in the same entourage of the prince. Tiberius was a cultured and refined man, an almost pathological collector of works of art, a fine intellectual who loved to surround himself with scientists and scholars. The story ends with the Blue Grotto, the extraordinary natural treasure chest transformed in the Middle Ages
Tiberian through the regularization of the rocky banks in a suggestive nymphaeum, where the marble group of Neptune and Tritons emerged at the water’s edge, here reproduced in its entirety also with a statue of a girl dressed in a peplos. A suggestive setting through plays of light and a refined sound commentary lead the visitor inside the cave, almost to get his feet wet.
The CharterhouseThe Certosa di San Giacomo was built between 1371 and 1374 by the Count James Arcuccisecretary of Joanna I of Anjou. In the 16th century it suffered serious damage during the raids of Turkish pirates, who set fire to it and looted it. Renovated and enlarged, in 1808, after the expulsion of the Carthusians, it became a hospice and then a prison. In 1921, the then mayor Edwin Cerio promoted the creation of a botanical garden in the green areas, to preserve the local flora. When at the beginning of the 20th century Capri became a favorite destination for intellectuals and artists, particularly loved by the futurists, the Certosa di San Giacomo was chosen as a venue for meetings, exhibitions and art displays.
Carlo Franza