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NEWS

The museum has been set up inside Palazzo Finaguerra, a historic building that has already belonged to the family of the same name, located in Matelica near the monumental complex of S. Francesco.

The palace dates back to its present appearance at the end of the 18th – early 19th centuries, a period in which the pictorial decorations of the first and second floor rooms were also made, but it is the result of transformations and extensions of pre-existing buildings.

The museum consists in archaeological finds from Matelica and its area, mainly found during recent excavation campaigns.

The materials on display cover a rather wide chronological arc ranging from Prehistory to the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Particularly represented is the phase related to civilization of the Piceni population with the rich tomb halls of the 8th-7th century B.C.

DESCRIPTION

On the ground floor there is the ticket office, the bookshop and the teaching room, while the exhibition path winds through the first and second floors following a chronological order.

On the first floor is hosted the prehistoric and protohistorical section, with materials of the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Aeneolithic and Bronze Age.

Following is the section dedicated to the Iron Age that begins with the exhibition of finds from the inhabited areas and continues with the sector dedicated to necropolis. The funerary kits on display cover a rather wide chronological arc, ranging from the 8th to the 4th B.C.

Of particular importance are the tombs of the “orientalizing” phase (late 8th-early 6th century b.C.). Among these are:

• the tomb n.20 in the Cavalieri locality, from which an earthen pot comes;
• tomb n.93 of the locality of Crocifisso that returned a pisside (small cylindrical box) in ivory;
• tomb n.172, also from Crocifisso, with a rich kit of vases, metal elements of a carriage, a helmet and bronze schinieri (a kind of chaps).
• another tomb with carriage is the n. 53 from Brecce, which includes a helmet with mask and the extraordinary support with a basin decorated with griffon heads (holmos and lebete).
• About tomb n.1 of Villa Clara, we point out the metal objects: the helmet, the cista (small bucket), the boiler, the weapons, the affix (large rectangular brooch) with ivory and amber applications and a bronze “scepter”, symbol of the high social rank of the deceased.

On the second floor are exhibited testimonies of the Roman city of Matilica that illustrate the aspects of architecture, urban planning, artistic expressions, daily life, epigraphic and numismatic documentation, the funerary areas of the city in the first centuries of the imperial age (1-2nd century B.C.).

The exhibition continues with the materials coming from excavation related to the Medieval and Renaissance phases of the city, represented above all by specimens of common ceramics and majolica.