Capo Colonna and the Treasure of Hera

Getting there

The promontory is south-east of the city, along the coast, and the motorhome is left in front of the museum.

• By motorhome: from Crotone head south along the coast, or from the SS106 state road at Sant'Anna take the SP50 provincial road. In front of the Capo Colonna museum there are car parks, next to the bus stop: no known sign bans them to motorhomes, but none reserves them either. The Campeggio Alfieri campsite is two and a half kilometres away, on the same road
• By bus from Crotone: urban line 13 of Romano Autolinee reaches Capo Colonna only on weekdays. With the 2026 winter timetable it left the terminus in via Giuseppe Di Vittorio at 6:15, at 11:00, in the early afternoon and at 19:00, and came back from the cape at 6:35, at 11:35, at 15:10 and at 19:35: the 11:00 bus and the 15:10 return are enough for the visit. It does not run on Sundays, and on Mondays the park is closed: for the visit the bus is useful from Tuesday to Saturday
• The museum in Crotone is in via Risorgimento, in the old town next to the castle: with the motorhome left at the harbour it is ten minutes away on foot

Practical information

The park and the museum at Capo Colonna cost nothing and need no booking, except for groups; the museum in Crotone, when it reopens, has a ticket.

Contacts

Where it is

Capo Colonna, Crotone · Calabria

You set off from

Notes

• Opening hours, read on 15 October 2026: the Capo Colonna park is open Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00 to 17:30, with last entry at 17:00; these are the autumn hours, written by the Ministry on 13 October, and in summer the park stayed open until 20:00. The hours follow the daylight, and in December it may close earlier. The Capo Colonna museum is open Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00 to 19:30, with last entry at 19:00. On Mondays everything is closed. Nobody states the Christmas and New Year closures: phone
• Tickets: the park and the museum at Capo Colonna are free. The Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Crotone, when it is open, costs 4 euros, 2 from 18 to 25, and is free under 18; tickets are bought at the ticket office or on the Musei Italiani portal. On the first Sunday of the month the museum in Crotone is free too. The Calabria Cultura Pass, which gives a discount in other museums of the region, such as those of Reggio and Locri, is not valid at the museum in Crotone
• The museum in Crotone is closed until 7 January 2027: since 9 February 2026 there have been works to remove the physical barriers and those that make the halls hard to understand. Whether part of the Treasure is on display elsewhere in the meantime nobody writes. The date is a building site's date: before going in January, check the website, or phone 0962 23082
• The park, on the tip of the promontory the Greeks called Lakinion akron, was created in 1993 by taking the land back from illegal building, and the operator has replanted the Mediterranean scrub like the sacred grove of Hera in the ancient sources. You enter by the gate, partly preserved, on the Via Sacra, the Sacred Way. Of temple A, the great Doric temple of 480-470 BC, what remains are the foundation trenches, a piece of the base and the column with its capital. Building B, from the beginning of the sixth century BC, was the first place of worship and then the treasury of the sanctuary: the Treasure of Hera comes from here. Buildings K and H, from the fourth century BC, were the lodging for distinguished guests and the banqueting hall. To the north are the remains of the Roman colony of Croto, founded in 194 BC and enclosed by a circuit wall, with the baths, the mosaic of the balneum and the houses. The sea around is inside the Capo Rizzuto marine protected area
• The Capo Colonna museum tells the story of the sanctuary in three sections: the Roman settlement, with pottery and everyday objects; the sacred buildings, from the Archaic period to the Classical temple, with a reconstructed piece of the temple's marble roof and the votive offerings; and underwater archaeology, with the wrecks from the seabed off the cape, among them the cargo of Roman marbles from the ship that sank at Punta Scifo. In September 2026 the excavations on the promontory were still under way
• The Treasure of Hera, upstairs in the museum in Crotone, includes the gold diadem, a double garland of myrtle leaves and berries worked in the second half of the sixth century BC and remade in the fifth, and the bronze Nuragic boat, a lamp that came from Sardinia between the ninth and the eighth centuries BC, with animals on its rim. From the sanctuary also come the winged Gorgon, the sphinx and the bronze sirens displayed in the same museum. In the museum there are then the siren-shaped askos of the fifth century BC, returned by the Getty Museum in Malibu in 2007, and the parade muzzle for horses recovered by the Carabinieri in 2018
• History and legends: the Ministry relates that on the promontory Pythagoras is said to have met the women of his school, that in the fifth century BC the sanctuary was perhaps the seat of the League of the Italiote cities, and that Hannibal set sail from here for Carthage. Hera Lacinia protected sailors and the livestock that grazed freely in the sacred grove. According to Wikipedia, until the sixteenth century the place was called Capo delle Colonne, the Cape of the Columns, and the cape's other name, Capo Nao, which has stayed with the tower, comes from the Greek naos, the temple
• The Torre Nao and the church stand outside the park enclosure, on the churchyard. The tower was built between about 1550 and 1568, with a raised entrance and a drawbridge; it belongs to the Comune, and whether it can be visited inside nobody writes. The white church of the Madonna di Capo Colonna has on its altar a copy of the painting of the Madonna: the original is in Crotone. It is the goal of the night pilgrimage between the Saturday and the third Sunday of May, when the city arrives on foot in the morning
• What there is and what there is not: the Ministry's pages on cultural sites name the cloakroom among the services of the museum in Crotone, and for Capo Colonna they list no services; about dogs and photographs they say nothing, and you ask at the entrance. A bar and toilets in the park are not indicated

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