Nemi historical timeline

Nemi begins as a wood rather than a settlement. Its name derives from the Latin nemus, "holy wood", and in antiquity the area had no town: what stood here was the grove, and in it the Temple of Diana Nemorensis — one of the most famous of Roman cults and temples.

The temple was an ancient Roman sanctuary erected around 300 BC and dedicated to Diana, though worship of Diana at Nemi flourished from at least the sixth century BC. It stood on the northern shore of the lake beneath the cliffs of the modern town, and it was a famous place of pilgrimage in the Italian peninsula. It was abandoned at some point in the late imperial period; portions of its marbles and decorations were removed, the area was gradually covered by forest and generally left undisturbed for centuries, and amateur archaeological excavations began only in the 1600s.

Possibly in connection with that cult, the emperor Caligula built several very large and costly luxury barges for use on the lake. One ship was a shrine dedicated to ceremonies for the Egyptian Isis cult or for the cult of Diana Nemorensis, designed to be towed; the other was a pleasure boat with buildings on it. After Caligula's overthrow, the boats were scuttled.

Getting them out took four centuries of trying. They were rediscovered during the Renaissance, when the architect Leon Battista Alberti is reported to have attempted to raise them by roping them to buoyant barrels — ingenious, and unsuccessful, because of extensive rotting.

They were finally salvaged under the orders of Benito Mussolini, which was just one of many attempts to relate himself to the Roman emperors of the past. The ships were exposed by lowering the lake level, using underground canals that had been dug by the ancient Romans themselves. The excavation was led by Guido Ucelli and reported in his Le Navi di Nemi (Rome, 1950). The operation concluded in 1932; accounts differ on when it began, the Italian record giving 1927 and the English 1929.

And then they burned. The ships were destroyed by fire on 31 May 1944. It is disputed whether this was done by defeated German forces retreating from Italy at the end of the Second World War, or accidentally by squatters taking refuge in the museum building.

In the town's own history, a smaller date: in 1514 Marcantonio I Colonna gave Nemi the Statuti e Capituli del Castello di Nemi.