The Museo Etrusco Guarnacci (in effect, the Guarnacci Museum of Etruscan Artifacts ) is a public archeological museum located on Via Don Giovanni Minzoni #15 in Volterra, region of Tuscany, Italy. This was one of the first public museums in Italy, founded in 1761 by the aristocrat and abbott Mario Guarnacci (1701–1785).
Guarnacci was a zealous collector of antiquities, and donated his collection, including over 600 funerary urns, to "the citizens of the city of Volterra". The donation also included a rich library of more than 50,000 volumes. Guarnacci himself published a contemporaneously controversial text, Origini Italiche, claiming that Greek and Latin cultures had their origins in an antecedent Etruscan civilization.
The first Museum was housed in Palazzo Maffei in then Via Guidi, [1] which had been purchased by Guarnacci to house his collection. At his death in 1785 the collection was moved to the 13th century Palazzo dei Priori. With further additions, the museum was transferred in 1877 by then director Niccolo Maffei to the Palazzo Desideri Tangassi.
The original displays were organized by theme rather than by chronology; for example, this arrangement still persists for in the displays of cinerary urns. In the first room on the ground floor, the museum displays the artifacts from the necropolis of the Badia and the Guerrucia excavated in 1892/1898. Additional findings from the site, discovered in 1996, in the Warrior's Tomb including a bronze crested helmet and a laminated bronze flask were added to the exhibit.
The second room displays a bucchero Kyathos from Monteriggioni, a series of bronze votive figurines and jewellery from the tomb in Gesseri di Berignone (Volterra) donated to the museum by Bishop Incontri in 1839. The Stele of Avile Tite from the 6th-century B.C. is on display.
In Room III, are displayed artifacts from the 5th-century B.C: a scarab in carnelian with a Greek inscription bearing the name of the artist (Lysandros), an Attic Krater attributed to the Berlin Painter, and the Etruscan calque sculpture, the Lorenzini Head.
In the second floor are artifacts from tombs of the Hellenistic centuries (6th-1st century B.C.). The urns would hold the cremated ashes of the honored dead, and their lids often represented a recumbent figure attending a banquet feast. In Room 30, are a display of urns made from local alabaster. Further rooms include artifacts in bronze and ceramics; mirrors, votive figurines, vases, locally minted coins, and black and red figure vases. Room 35 displays a statue of the 3rd century Mother and Child (Kourotrophos Maffei) and fragments of terracotta decorations from a temple facade. The museum also displays a collection of mosaic floor and Ancient coins. [2]
Volterra is a walled mountaintop town in the Tuscany region of Italy. Its history dates from before the 8th century BC and it has substantial structures from the Etruscan, Roman, and Medieval periods.
The Capitoline Museums are a group of art and archaeological museums in Piazza del Campidoglio, on top of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, Italy. The historic seats of the museums are Palazzo dei Conservatori and Palazzo Nuovo, facing on the central trapezoidal piazza in a plan conceived by Michelangelo in 1536 and executed over a period of more than 400 years.
Vulci or Volci was a rich Etruscan city in what is now northern Lazio, central Italy.
The National Archaeological Museum in Athens houses some of the most important artifacts from a variety of archaeological locations around Greece from prehistory to late antiquity. It is considered one of the greatest museums in the world and contains the richest collection of Greek Antiquity artifacts worldwide. It is situated in the Exarcheia area in central Athens between Epirus Street, Bouboulinas Street and Tositsas Street while its entrance is on the Patission Street adjacent to the historical building of the Athens Polytechnic university.
The National Roman Museum is a museum, with several branches in separate buildings throughout the city of Rome, Italy. It shows exhibits from the pre- and early history of Rome, with a focus on archaeological findings from the period of Ancient Rome.
The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations is located on the south side of Ankara Castle in the Atpazarı area in Ankara, Turkey. It consists of the old Ottoman Mahmut Paşa bazaar storage building, and the Kurşunlu Han. Because of Atatürk's desire to establish a Hittite museum, the buildings were bought upon the suggestion of Hamit Zübeyir Koşay, who was then Culture Minister, to the National Education Minister, Saffet Arıkan. After the remodelling and repairs were completed (1938–1968), the building was opened to the public as the Ankara Archaeological Museum.
Etruscan art was produced by the Etruscan civilization in central Italy between the 10th and 1st centuries BC. From around 750 BC it was heavily influenced by Greek art, which was imported by the Etruscans, but always retained distinct characteristics. Particularly strong in this tradition were figurative sculpture in terracotta, wall-painting and metalworking especially in bronze. Jewellery and engraved gems of high quality were produced.
The National Archaeological Museum of Florence is an archaeological museum in Florence, Italy. It is located at 1 piazza Santissima Annunziata, in the Palazzo della Crocetta.
The Art & History Museum is a public museum of antiquities and ethnographic and decorative arts located at the Parc du Cinquantenaire/Jubelpark in Brussels, Belgium. The museum is one of the constituent parts of the Royal Museums of Art and History (RMAH) and is one of the largest art museums in Europe. It was formerly called the Cinquantenaire Museum until 2018. It is served by the metro stations Schuman and Merode on lines 1 and 5.
The Archaeological Museum of Dion is a museum in Dion in the Pieria regional unit of Central Macedonia, Greece.
The Hypogeum of the Volumnus family is an Etruscan tomb in Ponte San Giovanni, a suburb of Perugia, Umbria, central Italy. Its dating is uncertain, although it is generally assigned to the 3rd century BC.
The Archaeological Museum of Milan is located in the ex-convent of the Monastero Maggiore, alongside the ancient church of San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore, with entrance on Corso Magenta.
The Antonino Salinas Regional Archeological Museum is a museum in Palermo, Italy. It possesses one of the richest collections of Punic and Ancient Greek art in Italy, as well as many items related to the history of Sicily. Formerly the property of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, the museum is named after Antonino Salinas, a famous archaeologist and numismatist from Palermo who had served as its director from 1873 until his death in 1914, upon which he left it his major private collection. It is part of the Olivella monumental complex, which includes the Church of Sant'Ignazio all'Olivella and the adjoining Oratory.
The Archaeological Civic Museum of Bologna is located in the fifteenth-century Palazzo Galvani building at Via dell'Archiginnasio 2 postal code 40124 Bologna, once known as the Hospital of Death. Founded in September 1881 by the merging of two separate museums: the one belonging to the University of Bologna – heir of the Room of Antiquity belonging to the Academy of Sciences founded by Luigi Ferdinando Marsili in (1714) – and that belonging to the City of Bologna (enriched by the antique collection of Artist Pelagio Palagi and the large amount of finds from excavations conducted in and around Bologna during these times.
The Tarquinia National Museum is an archaeological museum dedicated to the Etruscan civilization in Tarquinia, Italy. Its collection consists primarily of the artifacts which were excavated from the Necropolis of Monterozzi to the east of the city. It is housed in the Palazzo Vitelleschi.
Mario Guarnacci was an Italian prelate, archeologist, and historian. He was one of the first scholars to carry out systematic excavations of Etruscan tombs.
Etruscan sculpture was one of the most important artistic expressions of the Etruscan people, who inhabited the regions of Northern Italy and Central Italy between about the 9th century BC and the 1st century BC. Etruscan art was largely a derivation of Greek art, although developed with many characteristics of its own. Given the almost total lack of Etruscan written documents, a problem compounded by the paucity of information on their language—still largely undeciphered—it is in their art that the keys to the reconstruction of their history are to be found, although Greek and Roman chronicles are also of great help. Like its culture in general, Etruscan sculpture has many obscure aspects for scholars, being the subject of controversy and forcing them to propose their interpretations always tentatively, but the consensus is that it was part of the most important and original legacy of Italian art and even contributed significantly to the initial formation of the artistic traditions of ancient Rome. The view of Etruscan sculpture as a homogeneous whole is erroneous, there being important variations, both regional and temporal.
Women were respected in Etruscan society compared to their ancient Greek and Roman counterparts. Today only the status of aristocratic women is known because no documentation survives about women in other social classes.
The Palazzo Maffei is a Renaissance-style aristocratic palace located on Via Giacomo Matteotti #35 in central Volterra, province of Pisa, region of Tuscany, Italy. While initially commissioned by the Bishop Mario Maffei (1463–1537) who had been secretary to Popes Eugene IV and Pius II. Mario was the brother of Raffaele Maffei, who also resided, along with his library, in this palace while in Volterra. The palace had been completed by 1527. Initially the palace facade had an exterior frescoed facade with a depiction of a Roman triumph by Daniele Ricciarelli.
The Museo Claudio Faina is an archeologic museum located in the Palazzo Faina, across the piazza from the north side of the facade of the Duomo in Orvieto, region of Umbria, Italy.