This is great stuff, but I need to find a link to the two royal barges they dug up in 1920 from one of the lakes. Unfortunately they were destroyed in WWII, but they were 200 feet long.
Oooops, it was Caligula's barge in Lake Nemi. http://time-proxy.yaga.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,737289,00.html
[
Nineteen centuries of foundered orgy looked up at the hydroairplane which last week waltzed high over Lake Nemi in the Alban hills back of Rome. And Giuseppe Cultrera, Etruscan scholar in the plane,* looked down from the vantage of his flying height through Nemi's waters and could see what none but groping divers theretofore had seen—the sunken Golden Barge whereon epileptic Emperor Caligula†, great-grandson of Augustus, and his minions held their carouses.
Two vessels lie on Lake Nemi's bottom. Centuries of slime cover them, and rocks that have slipped from the steep sides of the Alban crater which contains the lake. One of them, the smaller, is certainly Caligula's. Treasure hunters since the 15th century have tried to raise the barge, un successfully and to its great damage. Some years ago one adventurer yanked loose a lead pipe. On it was an inscription which referred to Caligula. The float was decorated with marble, mosaics and carved woodwork.
Where past salvagers failed to raise Caligula's barge, Premier Mussolini's scientific henchmen were last week succeeding by an inverse procedure. Four great electric pumps, which they had set up at Lake Nemi's edge, were lowering the water level. By April 21, the 2,280th anniversary of Rome's legendary founding, they must, according to their instructions, uncover the vessel. Last week only a few feet of water remained above it. It is probable that the pumpers will make their schedule and the curious may gloat at the water-logged site of Caligula's orgies.
Exactly 1,888 years ago last week Caligula was assassinated for insult to a Praetorian tribune. He was only 29, but into the few years of his manhood he packed a rare amount of extravagance, cruelty, debauchery. ]
for a pic:
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~mharrsch/2005_08_01_academicpres_archive.html