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Although no trace of it remains, it is important to recall that the area on which the museum stands was occupied in the Middle Ages by the Tower of St Erasmus (originally Swabian, and then Angevin and Aragonese), which had been erected in the area of the Capitolium of the Roman city.
After various uses, in 1981 the building, which was managed by the Region of Campania, was entrusted to the Archaeological Division of the provinces of Naples and Caserta to carry out the restoration work necessary to set up the present Museum, which opened in 1995.
The town where the Museum is located, Santa Maria Capua Vetere, corresponds to the site of ancient Capua, which was inhabited uninterruptedly from the IX century B.C. onwards for the whole of the ancient period.
From the first settlements the city, head of the so-called Etruscan dodekapolis , maintained trading links with the Greek world. Other important items in ancient Capua’s economy were farming and artistic craft-work (bronze and clay objects).
We know little of the early phase of the Samnite domination, which succeeded that of the Etruscans in the IV century B.C. apart from what has emerged from the necropolis, and there is little of this before the IV sec. B.C. The Samnite period was also characterised by the activity of sanctuaries, such as the extra-urban one of Diana Tifatina, well-known in antiquity, and the one found in the Patturelli estate, from which come the famous “Capuan Mothers”, now held in the Campanian Provincial Museum of Capua.
After various vicissitudes with Rome, especially during the Punic Wars, Capua was finally Romanised from 59 B.C. onwards, when a colony of veterans who had fought with Caesar was installed there.
The city had its ups and downs in the following centuries, until it was invaded by Genseric’s Vandals in the V century A.D., and in the IX century A.D. by the Saracens, which brought its final fall.
There have been numerous attempts since the Renaissance to restore the plan of ancient Capua: for a presentation of the historical periods and an explanation of the finds through the materials of the different periods, see the web-site http://perseo.cib.na.cnr.it/cibcnr/ntnp.html .
http://perseo.cib.na.cnr.it/cibcnr/ntnp.html
www.archeologia.beniculturali.it/pages/atlante/S79.html