Civic Archaeological Museum - Via dell’Archiginnasio 2

The new arrangement of the Roman collection in the Civic Archaeological Museum was recently opened on May 7th 2010. First arranged when the museum opened in 1881 and after being closed for two years, the collection is once more available for public view, offering a totally new arrangement and new thematic and display ideas. The roughly one thousand archaeological finds on display, selected from the finds that came to the Museum from the Palagi and University collections, are divided into themes in order to give a general idea of the principal aspects of everyday life in the Roman world. The tableware in priceless ceramics, glass and silver, lamps, articles for the care of the body, elements of furnishing, testimonials from the productive activities, coins in gold, silver and bronze, religious statuettes, strange amulets and refined pyxides in ivory find a spacious setting in Rooms IX and VII in the Archaeological Museum.

The collection is divided up into the following sections:

Life in the domus: cooking pottery and tableware

The section displays cooking vessels in plain pottery and refined tableware in ceramics and glass for use on the tables of the richer citizens (goblets, plates, glasses, bottles and jugs). The three goblets for drinking wine in embossed worked silver, the fragment of a glass serving dish and the splendid mosaic-worked bowl of gaily coloured glass are particularly interesting.

Life in the domus: lighting

A large area is dedicated to oil lamps, with lamps in terracotta or bronze with one or more spouts to contain the wick, which was soaked in oil or tallow and then lit with some kind of match. The lamps were usually decorated and are today considered represent a sort of “thermometer” of the tastes of the ancient Romans: they are in fact decorated with a wide variety of subject matter that ranges from gods and gladiators to moments inpublic life and even erotic scenes.

Life in the domus: furnishings and utensils

Only the metal elements covering and decorating the sofa beds, chairs, wardrobes and strongboxes can be seen today only as unfortunately none of the organic material (wood, fabric, leather) has survived. This however does not prevent the visitor from appreciating the refined beauty of these finds. Married women wore the tiny and very ingenious key ring on the middle finger of their left hand and used it to open and close their little jewellery boxes.

Religion and superstition

There were a great many divinities throughout the religious world of the Romans and the Museum contains a large quantity of bronze figurines that were originally preserved in a lararia, a small niche placed inside the entrance to the house, among them Hercules, Jove, Diana, Minerva, Mercury and Dionysius, as well as oriental gods and personifications, like the goddesses Fortuna and Abbundantia. The phallic amulets, the sign of vivifying power, and the bells are instead connected with  superstitious spheres.

Funerary cult

This section contains a demonstrative reconstruction of some typical tomb furnishings, including the funerary urns still  containing the ashes of the dead, drinking cups and pots for balsams and perfumes, coins and any other articles that could help the dead person in his afterlife.

Trades

The collection’s archaeological discoveries give voice to a great many different types of trade that include the baker, the figulus (in other words a worker in clay), the doctor and the soldier, who when necessary, could also become a craftsman, as we can see from the fragment of brick produced by the legio XIIII Gemina who proudly signed his work with a seal stamped on the fresh clay.

Weights and measures and coinage

This section offers a cross-section of the system used for the measurement of weights among ancient peoples and also offers the chance to display some coins from the 100.000 examples in the Museum numismatic collection. Aurei, denarii, Antoninian and solid coins thus become refined instruments for showing the chronological succession of the Emperors, while also offering testimonials of how the coinage was used in the ancient economic system.

Ornaments and care of the body

Brooches, jewellery and large hair pins embellished the “looks” of the rich ladies

who, like the men, also liked to take care of their bodies by making use of creams and

toilette articles like balsam containers, tweezers, small spatulas and the strigil, a sort of curved palette knife that was used to clean the body after training sessions in the gymnasium.

The period of Late Antiquity

The finds dating from the last stages of the Roman civilisation include two splendid

ivory pyxides of the 5th century A.D., respectively decorated with scenes from the life of Dionysius and episodes from the Bible and wonderful examples of Late Antiquity artistic craftsmanship, when the values of Christianity had already been radically introduced to replace those of the pagan world.

Sculpture

The collection boasts a great many sculptures, most of them portraits that have been proved to date from the Imperial period, even though there are also several works inspired by Greek originals.