Naples Sea Museum, Thetys Foundation

Since 1997 it has been a member of the Mediterranean Sea Museums Association, and in 2007 it was recognized as a Museum of Regional Interest by the Campania Region.

The Sea Museum currently represents the only museum reality linked to the sea in a maritime city with ancient traditions like Naples.

With the richness of its collections of great historical and artistic value and with its valuable collection of books of specific interest, it constitutes a unique testimony of the evolution of Neapolitan seamanship over the last three centuries. To the initial core of the Sea Museum, which dates back to the early twentieth century, donations from institutions and private individuals have been added over the years, enriching its heritage and expanding cultural offerings.

Beyond safeguarding and enhancing its rich museum heritage, the Sea Museum, with its exhibition spaces, routes and educational materials, study and research activities, and the organization of cultural events, works to recover, enhance and spread the historical memory and maritime civilization of Naples, which is a very rich historical and cultural heritage that developed mainly from the eighteenth to the twentieth century and risks disappearing.

The Memory Project, in which the Museum is strongly involved, intends to respond to the need each community has to seek its roots and rediscover its identity.

This project arises without codified formulas, evokes events that happened, recalls a long chain of events of private, public, and collective stories: however, it should not be confused with a false “mythological” reconstruction of a celebratory and folkloric type of the maritime world, which would distort the history of coastal towns with nostalgic operations tending to oppose an alleged traditional society to the modern and post-modern society.

Our appeal to memory is not part of a fashionable cultural trend, devoid of real interest, but aims to identify research paths to know and understand the economic, social, and cultural development and transformation processes that have affected the territory and the life of communities.