World War II, the deadliest and most destructive conflict in human history, claimed tens of
millions of lives. The incomprehensible human cost was accompanied by devastation on a vast scale.
Cities were gutted, masterpieces were looted, cathedrals were burned to the ground.
A few instances of cultural destruction became infamous,
such as the 1944 bombing of the Abbey of Monte Cassino.
Less well-known are the many Roman artifacts and buildings that were
damaged or destroyed during the fighting. This video surveys four of the greatest losses.
Number 4. The sarcophagi of the Camposanto The Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa is one of the
greatest achievements of medieval architecture, and one of the most beautiful places in Italy.
There are four buildings on the Piazza. The domed baptistery, on the left in this video;
the Camposanto, the low white building to the right of the baptistery;
the huge and magnificent cathedral, a Romanesque masterpiece dating to the eleventh century,
and decorated – as you can see here – with ranks of arches and bands of grey marble; and, last
but certainly not least, the famous Leaning Tower, the cathedral’s vertically-challenged campanile.
The leaning tower, of course, is one of the most famous buildings on Earth.
But art historians tend to get more excited about the least imposing structure on the Piazza:
the Camposanto, a monumental cemetery for the great and good of Renaissance Pisa.
The Camposanto is long cloister centered on a green lawn.
For centuries, it was famous throughout Europe, less from the elegant simplicity of its design
than from the artistic treasures it contained. Every available surface inside its marble walls
was brilliant with frescoes by early Renaissance masters.
Beneath those frescoes stood a massive collection of Roman statues and sarcophagi. The sarcophagi
were especially impressive – marble masterpieces, splendidly carved, that had been collected by
Pisan captains and diplomats from every corner of Italy. Some of the sarcophagi were re-used to
bury distinguished Pisans. Others were simply admired as the artistic treasures they were.
On July 27, 1944, an allied artillery shell struck the Camposanto’s roof. The wooden rafters caught
on fire, and soon the entire roof was burning. Molten lead ran in streams down the walls,
destroying most of the frescoes and puddling on the sarcophagi. The extreme heat and contact
with boiling metal cracked and pulverized marble, reducing most of the Camposanto’s proud collection
of ancient sculpture to glowing rubble. After allied troops liberated Pisa five weeks
later, a team led by the American Art historian Deane Keller, one of the famous Monuments Men,
tried to save what was left of the Camposanto. Workmen gathered up thousands of fragments from
the shattered frescos and scraped hardened lead from the sarcophagi that could be salvaged.
Today, thanks to decades of diligent restoration work, visitors to the Camposanto
can admire a few reconstructed frescoes and a modest collection of Roman sarcophagi.
All this, however, is a shadow of what was lost during the war.
Number 3. The Ancient Collections of the Berlin State Museums
Tens of thousands of cultural treasures were looted or destroyed
during the Second World War. The worst offenders, of course, were the Nazis,
who confiscated or forced the sale of many art collections belonging to Jewish families.
But in the spring of 1945, as the allied armies converged on Berlin, Germany itself was subjected
to looting on a vast scale. The collections of Germany’s greatest museums were no exception.
Since the mid-nineteenth century, Germany’s premier historical museums have been
clustered together on a small island in central Berlin. By the beginning of the Second World War,
these museums housed one of Europe’s most important collections of classical antiquities.
In the closing stages of the war, as allied bombing raids intensified and it became
increasingly obvious that enemy armies would reach Berlin, the museum directors tried to
move the collections to safety, storing movable artifacts in the vaults of the mint and inside two
of Berlin’s massive concrete flak towers. In April 1945, as the Red Army closed in,
armored convoys transferred part of the Museum’s collection to salt mines west of the city.
Many of the most precious artifacts, however, remained in Berlin.
Although the museum buildings were badly damaged by allied bombing,
the artifacts in the flak towers remained secure until the Soviets entered the city. During the
chaos of the Battle of Berlin, several fires broke out in one of the flak towers, destroying hundreds
of priceless Renaissance paintings and an unknown number of classical artifacts.
As German resistance ended, the surviving artifacts hidden
in the mint and flak towers were left unguarded. Some were looted by individuals. Most, however,
were confiscated by the Red Army and sent as spoils of war to the Soviet Union.
The confiscated antiquities remain a topic of contention between Germany and Russia today.
Thanks to this dispute, to Soviet secrecy, and to the fog that surrounds the Fall of Berlin,
we’ll never know how much of the Berlin Museum’s collection was destroyed in the
last days of the war, and how much lies hidden in private collections and Russian storerooms.
Number 2. The Crypt of Cocceius
In a normal year, a trickle of tourists ventures out to the archaeological sites west of Naples.
Few of these visitors pause to notice the narrow drive, potholed and partly overgrown, that leads
from the main road to Cumae. Those who follow that drive are soon stopped by a metal gate.
Beyond, a tunnel stretches off into darkness.
This is the Crypt of Cocceius, known in Italian as the Grotta di Coccaeio or Grotta della Pace.
Whatever you call it, this is the lengthiest road tunnel ever built by the Romans.
The tunnel was a product of the civil wars that ushered in the reign of Augustus. It was built
in 37 BC on the orders of Agrippa, Augustus’ right-hand man, who was then preparing a fleet
against the rebel Sextus Pompeius. To create a safe harbor for training his crews, Agrippa linked
an inland lake to the Bay of Naples with canals, and had the gifted engineer Lucius Cocceius
Auctus bore a tunnel through the hill that lay between the new harbor and the town of Cumae.
The tunnel Cocceius excavated was about a kilometer long,
and wide enough for loaded carts to drive through. It was lit and ventilated by a
series of light wells up to 30 meters deep, and paralleled by an aqueduct channel.
Although the military need for the tunnel lasted only a few years, it survived the middle ages
virtually intact, and was reactivated as a road tunnel in the nineteenth century.
The crypt of Cocceius remained in use until the Second World War, when the Fascist government
decided to store munitions in the ancient tunnel. You can probably guess where this is going.
In 1943, Nazi soldiers retreating from Naples set off the stored explosives, causing catastrophic
damage. The tunnel has been closed ever since. Number 1. The Nemi Ships
Lake Nemi, about 25 kilometers from Rome, was, and is, a beautiful place. Located in the crater of an
extinct volcano, it was ringed by dense woods and the palatial villas of the Roman elite. The lake
was sacred to the goddess Diana, whose ancient sanctuary stood in a grove on the northern shore.
Even in the middle of the day, it was said, the reflection of the moon,
Diana’s symbol, could be seen on the still waters. By tradition and Roman law, no ship could sail
on the sacred lake. But Caligula – either because he was unimpressed by the prohibition
or because he wished to honor Diana with floating sanctuaries – ordered the construction
of two gargantuan barges on Lake Nemi. The barges were among the largest wooden ships
ever constructed. One was 73 meters long and 24 meters wide; the other was only slightly smaller.
Each was a floating palace, complete with heated marble floors,
shady gardens, working fountains, and even baths.
After Caligula’s assassination, the barges were neglected, and soon sank. They were remembered
only by local fishermen, who occasionally recovered bits and pieces of wreckage. In 1446,
inspired by the Renaissance enthusiasm for all things Roman, a cardinal attempted to raise one
of the ships by building a large floating platform on the surface of the lake and hiring divers to
attach chains to the wreck. Almost as soon as the men on platform began to winch the ship
upward, however, the chains snapped, and only a few fragments were brought to the surface.
Another attempt, equally unfruitful, was made in 1535 using a primitive diving bell.
A more successful effort to recover artifacts from the wrecks was mounted in 1895,
when an enterprising explorer managed to recover some of the elaborate mooring rings, railings,
and bronze fittings from the ships. These artifacts can still be seen
in a special room of Rome’s Palazzo Massimo museum.
Finally, in 1928, Mussolini ordered the recovery of Caligula’s barges by any means necessary.
It was decided that the only practical method was to drain Lake Nemi down to the level of
the shipwrecks. This was a major undertaking, since one of the ships was 10 meters underwater,
and the other, half-buried in muck, was 20 meters below the surface.
A pumping station was established on the lake shore, and began funneling water out to the sea
through an ancient drainage tunnel. After six months of continuous pumping,
the prow of the first ship appeared. Another six months of drainage revealed the entire ship,
which was reinforced with modern timbers and moved ashore on a specially built railway.
The other ship, 10 meters deeper, was more difficult to recover. The pumps soon exposed
most of the hull; but before it could be freed from the mud, the drying lake bottom shifted,
stopping the work and allowing water to cover the wreck again. It was only in late 1932, a
year and a half after it first surfaced, that the second ship could be uncovered and moved ashore.
The two ships were moved into a specially constructed museum, which opened with great
fanfare in 1936. The ships were displayed in their entirety, alongside their colossal anchors
and cases of artifacts found in the lakebed. Disaster struck only a few years later.
In May 1944, during allied shelling of a nearby German artillery post,
fire broke out in the ship museum, started either by a shell fragment or by Nazi arsonists.
However the fire started, it completely destroyed both ships, leaving only a few bronze fittings.
The museum was reopened a few years later, and can still be visited today.
But the Nemi ships are gone forever, the greatest ancient casualty of the Second World War.
In the coming months, alongside my other series about the classical world, I plan to release more
videos about World War II and Antiquity, so stay tuned. If you enjoyed this video,
and haven’t yet been subjected to my sales pitch, you might enjoy my book Naked Statues,
Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants, available now wherever books are sold. Thanks for watching.