The Hidden Secrets Of Lake Nemi

Headlines last spring announced that a third pleasure-boat built for the Emperor Caligula (r AD 37–41) was about to be recovered from the murky waters of Lake Nemi near Rome. As it turned out, after investigating the facts with the former director of the Museo delle Navi at Nemi, archaeologist Giuseppina Ghini, this was not entirely a matter of ‘much ado about nothing’.

- Dalu Jones

Huge floating palaces were indeed built and used for the entertainment of the decadent emperor Caligula and two of these (measuring 71.30m x 20m and 73m x 24m) had been recovered from the bottom of Lake Nemi, thanks to a brilliant rescue operation in the early 1930s.

Unfortunately those ships were destroyed either by American bombs or vindictive German soldiers who set fire to them in 1944 during the Second World War. Some smaller scale models of the original hulls, and objects salvaged from pillaging and wanton destruction, were later reassembled and re-housed in the specially built Museo delle Navi, on the shores of the circular volcanic lake.

A third imperial ship was, however, believed to be still lying on the bottom of the lake, and this was the subject of the recent hullabaloo. In the event only a small (8m x 2.5m) boat, which might have been used when the first wrecks were lifted out of the waters last century, was located. At the time the water level of the lake (which has no natural outlets) was lowered by 12 metres by complex siphoning and water redistribution.

Analysis of the wood from this small boat is part of a current project undertaken this year that primarily concerns checking the pollution levels in the lake water, as well as using a side scan sonar Klein System 3000 to check for the presence of objects on the bottom of the lake.