The models room contains seven specimens created by Carlo Brignola for the museum’s original project, which illustrate the history of inland navigation in central Italy through the centuries, such as the monossila of Caolino (Sasso di Furbara, Cerveteri, mid-8th century BC), the F-ship from the port of Pisa (late 2nd century), the monossila from Trasimeno (13th century), two traditional Piediluco boats (13th–14th centuries), the monossila from the Pontine marshes (19th–20th centuries), and the Tiber boat (19th–20th centuries).
Since 2019 the Museum has acquired naval reproductions donated by Marco Bonino, one of the most authoritative scholars of naval archaeology and architecture. These are scale models of a typical Sardinian vessel, the Fassone from the Cabras lagoon; a carabus, a wicker boat clad in Roman-era animal skins from the Po delta region; three Piedmont dugout canoe from Mercurago, on Lake Maggiore; the monossila from Angera (VA) and the monossila from Lake Bertignano (TO), of which the originals are kept in various museums (Como Civic Museum, Varese Civic Museum, and with the Borghi family in Varano). A Po ferry from Faule is also visible. The chronological range of all the models spans from the Iron Age to the historical era. carabus, barca di vimini rivestita di pelli di età romana, proveniente dalla zona del delta del Po, di tre piroghe monossile piemontesi da Mercurago, sul Lago Maggiore, monossila di Angera (VA) e la monossila dal lago di Bertignano (TO), di cui gli originali sono conservati in diversi musei (museo civico di Como, museo civico di Varese e presso la famiglia Borghi a Varano). Si puo’ vedere anche un traghetto del Po di Faule. L’arco cronologico di tutti i modellini e’ compreso tra l’età del Ferro e l’età storica.
The collection closes with a model of a Cycladic boat (3rd millennium BC), reproduced from terracotta models from Palaikastro and Mochlos (Crete), which represents the fusion between the monossila, forming the boat’s bottom, and the side planks, thus a kind of junction between the two different naval construction technologies.
In the same room is also displayed the cargo of a wreck that carried construction materials (primarily tiles and roof tiles), found at Punta Zingara on Bisentina Island, for which the descriptive panel bears the title: “The Tile Wreck of Punta Zingara.”
