A rocky spur rising from the sea. An amazing view from the Gulf of Naples. A wide park of Mediterranean plants, with abundant massive historic trees and flowers. And a magnificent nineteenth-century two- story villa in Neoclassic style, harmoniously inserted in the landscape, rich of prestigious embellishments inside and outside, which a meticulous and respectful renovation has restored to its original appearance after the earthquake of 1980.
This would be more than enough to make of Villa Fondi de Sangro an unmissable stop on a trip to the Sorrento Coast. But the edifice built by Giovanni Andrea de Sangro, prince of Fondi, in 1840 in Piano di Sorrento, guards another reference, since it is the siege of the Territorial Archaeological Museum of Sorrento Peninsula, named after the famous French archaeologist, scholar of Magna Greciae, Georges Vallet.
A journey of knowledge and study of the most ancient story of human settlements in the Peninsula could only begin from the famous founder of Sorrentum, Liparus. On the ground floor of the museum, next to the magnificent great staircase of Vanvitelliano’s style, four lions from the 6th century BC are exhibited and a tuffa stele from the 5th century in the mnema, in other words the funerary monument dedicated to him. Coming from the necropolis of San Martino di Sant’Agnello, it is probably a work of local authors with strong cultural links with the Greek colonies of the Campania Coasts. The other side of the room is dominated by a big statue of Demetra, next to which there is a beautiful mosaic floor brought to light in Marina di Puolo.
The first room on the upper floor houses the finds resulting in the excavations which took place in Piano di Sorrento, in the town of Trinità, where vestiges attributable to the Gaudo culture in the second millennium BC have been found, which are the oldest found in the Peninsula. Other finds have been excavated in the archaic and classical necropolis of the Deserto di Sant'Agata dei Due Golfi locality, where investigations took place between 1994 and 1997, and in Via Nicotera in Vico Equense with the campaigns of the 1980s, as well as with restored bronze pieces coming from Sorrento. The reconstruction of tomb 2 from the 6th century BC is of great charm. in Sant’Agata dei Due Golfi and the precious red-figure pottery from Vico Equense dating back to the 5th century BC.
In the corridor between the first and the second room there are objects of worship and inscriptions, which are part of the objects belonging to the sanctuary of Athens in Punta Campanella. More particularly, we notice the cast of the important inscription on the rock from the first half of the 2nd century BC. Equally interesting is the marble head from the 6th century from Massalubrense.
The second room is entirely dedicated to the foundation of Sorrentum, illustrated in detail by an updated topographic map of all the archaeological sites already inspected and of the essays completed on the territory from 1993. The research activities in the necropolis of Porta Parsano is scientifically explained for the first time. Attributable to cultured models, the tuffa male herm is of absolute value and comes from the funeral table of the columbarium of the early imperial age. The variety of the finds of Roman age are no missing: anthropomorphic steles, terracotta and glass balsamariums, red-figures vases with a beautiful fish plate from the 4th century BC. Still in the second room, there are marble materials of the maritime villas of the coast: the villa of Capo di Massa in Villazzano and the villa of Pollio Felice, of which the model is proposed. Two funerary statues from the site of Via Nicotera in Vico Equense belong to the 1st century AD.
The site hosts the reconstruction of half of the nymphaeum of a splendind maritime villa of Julio-Claudian age discovered in Marina della Lobra in Massalubrense. The mosaic decoration is magnificent and represents a garden with several birds, a typical decorative motif of the 3rd Pompeian style, which has allowed to date the work to 55 AD. An ideal contamination between the ancient garden, recreated from the taste and the mastery of the artist for the roman villa, and today’s one, alive and real, yours to enjoy, surrounding and embellishing Villa Fondi.
