Museu National Museum of Maritime Archaeology of Caorle

The National Museum of Maritime Archaeology of Caorle is housed in the former agricultural estate of the Chiggiato family, who in the year nineteen ten purchased a vast property in Caorle that included farmland, later reclaimed by the family itself.

In the nineteen-nineties, the municipality of Caorle purchased the site of the former estate and granted part of it to the State under a ninety-nine-year free concession. For the creation of the museum, inaugurated in the year two thousand eighteen, the original building—once used to store farming tools and machinery—was carefully restored.

The museum exhibition is divided into two clearly distinct sections:

The first floor hosts archaeological finds from Caorle and the surrounding area, documenting human presence in this territory from the Late Bronze Age to the modern era.

In the year two thousand twenty-one, this section was further enriched with a new multimedia installation that offers visitors a captivating journey through the maritime heritage of the Upper Adriatic.

The ground floor, on the other hand, is dedicated to the discovery of the brig Mercurio, which sank during the Battle of Grado in the year eighteen twelve and was found off the coast of Punta Tagliamento. Multimedia stations and artifacts recovered from the wreck allow visitors to understand the work carried out by underwater archaeologists during the excavations, as well as the research that led to the reconstruction of the ship’s image and history.