Campanian Provincial Museum of Capua

The Campanian Provincial Museum of Capua, commonly known as the Museo Campano, is a provincial archaeological and historical museum located in Capua, southern Italy. Established in 1870 and inaugurated in 1874, it is dedicated to ancient Italian civilization in Campania and the Terra di Lavoro region. The museum holds particular significance for its unparalleled collection of ritual statues representing matres matutae from the ancient Roman site of Capua antica, and it maintains the second largest lapidarium in Campania after the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

The museum originated from a royal decree on 21 August 1869 that established a Committee for the conservation of monuments and antiquities in the Terra di Lavoro region, founded by Father Gabriele Iannelli, an archaeologist who corresponded with Theodor Mommsen. The museum was officially founded in 1870 and opened to the public on 31 May 1874. Its purpose was to preserve and display the abundant archaeological material emerging from excavations in the surrounding area. In the 1910s and 1920s, Amedeo Maiuri worked to consolidate the museum's status and reorganize its collections, a process completed in 1933. On 9 September 1943, Allied air strikes devastated Capua, destroying approximately 75 percent of the city's buildings and damaging Palazzo Antignano. Some important works were lost, including much of the Samnite fresco collection, stuccos, mosaics and frescoes from the temple of Diana at Sant'Angelo in Formis, decorated Roman craters, and some votive statuettes and architectural elements from the Fondo Patturelli temple. Reconstruction began in 1945, and the museum reopened in 1956. After further reorganization into archaeological and medieval sections, the museum closed again in 2009 for modernization, reopening on 28 March 2012 in the presence of President Giorgio Napolitano.

The museum's collections span the cultural history of the region from the Oscans through the Spanish period, organized across 32 rooms, two courtyards, and a garden. The archaeological section contains the world's most important collection of Matres Matutae, pre-Roman and Roman artifacts, and a substantial portion of finds from the Fondo Patturelli estate. The medieval section preserves sacred and secular testimonies of Capua, including remains of the repeatedly demolished Porta di Capua. The pinacoteca holds works by Bartolomeo Vivarini, Cristoforo Scacco, Giacinto Brandi, Giuseppe Marullo, and especially the largest collection of works by Francesco Liani. The museum also houses a library of approximately 70,000 printed volumes and manuscripts, including an important archival collection belonging to Bartolomeo Intieri, and a coin collection spanning from the 6th century BCE to the 19th century CE. The lapidarium, named after Theodor Mommsen for his fundamental contribution to its establishment, contains inscriptions catalogued in the tenth volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.

The signature collection comprises over 160 terracotta statues of Matres Matutae, popularly known as the Mothers of Capua, dating from the 7th to the 1st century BCE. These ritual statues represent an indigenous pre-Roman cult dedicated to fertility and the protection of mothers and children, recovered from a sanctuary discovered in 1845 at Petrara and subsequently excavated between 1873 and 1887. The museum also holds the body of a 13th-century statue of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, originally from the City Gate of Capua, though its head is now in Berlin. Among epigraphic materials, the museum preserves a dedicatory inscription from the colony of Capua (Julia Felix) to Emperor Hadrian, commemorating his restoration of the Amphitheatre of Capua, discovered in 1726 with its historic integration proposed by Alessio Simmaco Mazzocchi in 1727. The first courtyard displays Roman republican and imperial funerary stelae, capitals, and reliefs, including a keystone from an arch of the Amphitheatre of Capua bearing the protome of the god Volturnus.

The museum occupies Palazzo Antignano in Capua's historic centre. The building's origins trace to the 9th century during the Lombard period, though it was substantially rebuilt in the mid-15th century by Francesco Antignano, a prominent figure under Alfonso V of Aragon, with approval recorded in Aragonese chancellery registers. The reconstruction incorporated late Gothic style with Catalan-Moorish inspiration, evident in the monumental entrance portal and grand staircase, while the windows display Renaissance character. The façade features a Catalan Gothic portal and Renaissance elements, and the main courtyard contains a monumental open staircase. The restructuring absorbed the earlier Lombard church of San Lorenzo ad Crucem, deconsecrated in 1594, remnants of which are still visible at the arch crossing Via Duomo. The palace later passed to the Di Capua dukes of San Cipriano, and in the early 19th century housed administrative offices for the newly created Province of Terra di Lavoro under Joseph Bonaparte's reorganization of Naples. The museum's quarters were later expanded to include the 18th-century former monastery of the Concezione.