4 Roman Treasures Destroyed during World War II

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 famous such as the 1944 bombing of the abbey of monte casino 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 four the sarcophagi of the campo santo the piazza de miraculi in pisa is one of the great 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 compos santo the low white building to the right of the baptistry the huge and magnificent cathedral a romanesque masterpiece dating to the 11th century and decorated as you can see here with ranks of arches and bands of grey marble and last but 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 campo santo a monumental cemetery for the great and good of renaissance pisa the campo santo is a 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 peasant captains and diplomats from every corner of italy some of the sarcophagi were reused to bury distinguished peasants 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 capo santo'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 dean keller one of the famous monuments men tried to save what was left of the composanto workmen gathered up thousands of fragments from the shattered frescoes and scraped hardened lead from all the sarcophagi that could be salvaged today thanks to decades of diligent restoration work visitors to the campo santo can admire a few of the original frescoes in a modest collection of roman sarcophagi all this however is a shadow of what was lost during the war number three 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 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-19th century germany's premier historical museums have been clustered 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 clear that enemy forces 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 precious renaissance paintings and an unknown number of greek and roman artifacts his 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 collections was destroyed in the last days of the war and how much lies hidden in private collections and russian storerooms number two the crypt of coqueus in a normal year a trickle of tourists ventures out to the ancient sites west of naples few of these visitors paused to notice the narrow drive potholed and partly overgrown that branches off from the main road to kumai those who follow that drive are soon stopped by a metal gate beyond a tunnel extends off into darkness this is the crypt of cocaius known in italian as the grada di cocheo or grata de la pache whatever you call it this is the longest 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's right-hand man who was then preparing a fleet against the rebel sexes pompeus to create a safe harbor for training his crews agrippa linked a lake to the bay of naples with canals and he had the gifted engineer lucius coqueleus auctus bore a tunnel through the hill that lay between the new harbor and the town of kumai the tunnel kokeas excavated was about a kilometer long and wide enough for fully 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 though 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 19th century the crypt of kokeus 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 one 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 on the north shore even at noon 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 calegula'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 in the platform began to winch the ship upward however the chains snapped and only a few fragments were brought to the surface a second 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 cleveland's barges by any means necessary it was decided that the only practical method was to drain like enemy 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 lakeshore and began funneling water out to sea through an ancient drainage channel 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 purpose-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 built 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 lake bed disaster struck only a few years later in may 1944 during allied shelling of a nearby german artillery post fire broke out in the museum started either by a shell fragment or by nazi arsonists however the fire started it destroyed both ships entirely leaving only a few bronze fittings the museum was reopened a few years later and can still be visited today but the enemy ships are gone forever the greatest ancient casualty of the second world war in the coming months alongside my other series i plan to release more videos about the often surprising connections between world war ii and antiquity so please 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

Channel: toldinstone

Views: 348,779

Rating: 4.9044614 out of 5

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Id: rbSFMUcabnU

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/LondonRolling]

I just watched this yesterday and it made me so sad, I learned about the Nemi Ships and at the same time I learned that they were destroyed. Ffs. Such amazing ships, under water for 2000 years destroyed after just 15 years of being recovered. If they only were recovered after the war, we would still have them.

[u/Diligent_Jury_9956]

Interesting

[u/The_pun_fart]

Greetings from the states professor Ryan. Judging by the book release promo you're in Rome? If you do another episode on WWII destruction the allied bombing of Pompeii would be a good inclusion. Plaster casts of which no copies survive, damaged or destroyed buildings including the museum, and while some were repaired those areas have already begun to crumble due to inferior modern methods and/or materials. Unexploded bombs are still under the ancient city, making excavations more costly and time consuming.

Edit: posting a short article for the interested https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/pompeii-home-multiple-undetonated-world-war-ii-bombs-180972626/

[u/Axiochos-of-Miletos]

Everyone in this sub most likely has at least one ancient roman ancestor