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Excavation

  • Acropoli, cd. tempio di Giove
  • Cuma
  • Kyme, Cumae
  • Italy
  • Campania
  • Naples
  • Pozzuoli

Tools

Credits

  • The Italian Database is the result of a collaboration between:

    MIBAC (Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali - Direzione Generale per i Beni Archeologici),

    ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione) and

    AIAC (Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica).

  • AIAC_logo logo

Summary (English)

  • This excavation was run as a field school with the participation of 40 students. The object of the research was the upper temple on the acropolis, a colossal building in opus quadratum, built in the second half of the 4th century B.C. to substitute a structure dating to the archaic and classical periods. The temple was renewed in the early imperial period and in the early Christian period was transformed into a church.
    It is a very unusual complex, already closed and without a peristalsis in the Roman period. It was divided into five aisles; the central the widest one was occupied by two cellae and a small bath suite.

    The most difficult question in this research is its attribution to a specific deity. The temple is traditionally thought to have been dedicated to Jupiter, although without any certain evidence. Recent excavations have brought to light new evidence with explicit references to Apollo and perhaps Artemis and led to a re-discussion of the dedication and reinterpretation of the sacred topography on the acropolis.

    The excavation uncovered new tombs dating to the Early Christian and medieval phase, some of which reused fragments of important inscriptions. These included an imperial dedication that was part of a sculpture cycle, which must have stood on the acropolis.

    The excavations revealed the foundations of a wall that can be attributed to the archaic temple that was incorporated into the reconstruction of the second half of the 4th century B.C.
    A numerous group of architectural terracottas most of which came from a pit outside the temple can be dated to this latter phase, as can part of a roof that was very similar in design to the roof of Temple A in the forum area.

    Outside of the temple, numerous traces of the World War II Italo-German military camp were visible on the cineritic bedrock. It is possible to reconstruct the layout of this complex around the temple from bibliographic and archival sources, as well as period photographs and eyewitness accounts. Maiuri himself records an air-control post on the acropolis of Cumae as part of its use as a bulwark against a possible allied landing.

    Following the armistice in 1943 and the subsequent German retreat, the temple that was the centre of the Italian military camp seems to have passed under the control of the Sub-commission for Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives of the Allied Control Commission, as attested by a wooden sign found during the excavations.

  • Carlo Rescigno, Dipartimento di Lettere e Beni Culturali, Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli 

Director

Team

  • Francesco Perugino, Rosaria Sirleto, Eliana Vollaro, Sara Zannini, Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli (coordinatori)
  • Paolino Forino

Research Body

Funding Body

Images

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