Welcome to the site Napoliforme

It is housed in an eighteenth-century house in the historic centre of Meta and displays the collection of Mario Maresca, a descendant of a family of seafarers, shipowners and captains of long standing. The collection, built up in the 1950s and 1960s, is dedicated to the history of seafaring, and of Meta in particular, and outlines the historical period from the end of the 18th century to the First World War in which shipyards and maritime trade were fundamental resources for the Sorrento peninsula. The four sections of the exhibition document the history of shipyards with models and drawings of ships and the "maritime art" of ship ornaments. The ex-votos are a heritage of popular culture and rare iconographic evidence of life at sea on sailing ships in the 19th century, while the detailed description of the ship portraits shows the entrepreneurial skills of the ship owners. Among the curiosities are the objects built by sailors in their spare time, such as ships in bottles, and to these are added nautical instruments dating from the end of the 17th century to the beginning of the 20th (octants, sextants, dry compasses, telescopes and binoculars, barometers, a chronometer), a small library of nautical books and the tools typical of sailors' work and daily life, such as the wooden sailor's chest used to carry clothing and objects needed for long voyages. The archive of documents and photographs completes the visit: printed and manuscript documents on organisation and navigation (one of the oldest testimonies is a bill of lading from 1755) and photographs from the end of the 19th century: images of ships, shipyards on the coast and the protagonists of the Sorrento navy.