National Archaeological Museum, Florence, Italy

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 museum collects the best of excavations throughout Tuscany, with important Etruscan and Roman finds, as well as collections of other civilizations, such as an important Egyptian section and one of Greek vases, many of which have been restored in Etruscan tombs as testimonies of Numerous trade in the Mediterranean.

Archaeological Museum of Ferrara was inaugurated in 1935 to display artefacts featuring the ancient world of Spina, an important ancient emporium during the mid sixth and early third century B.C.

The museum is located inside the Palazzo Costabili, a sixteenth century building called “di Ludovico il Moro”, and has been brought back to its former magnificence thanks to the restoration of Biagio Rossetti’s architectural work, and Garofalo and Dosso Dossi’s frescoes.

The museum was inaugurated in the presence of king Victor Emmanuel II in 1870 in the buildings of the Cenacolo di Fuligno on via Faenza. At that time it only comprised Etruscan and Roman remains. As the collections grew, a new site soon became necessary and in 1880 the museum was transferred to its present building.

The collection’s first foundations were the family collections of the Medici and Lorraine, with several transfers from the Uffizi up to 1890 (except the collections of marble sculpture which the Uffizi already possessed). The Egyptian section was first formed in the first half of the 18th century from part of the collections of Pierre Léopold de Toscane, from another part of an expedition promoted by the same Grand Duke in 1828–29 and led by Ippolito Rosellini and Champollion (the man who first deciphered hieroglyphics).

The Etruscan section:
Located on the first floor was seriously injured during the flood in Florence in 1966. The restoration of the finds has occupied the whole of the next forty years and today, since 2000, it has been completed, although many rooms are still being reformulated.

The Roman section:
Among the most interesting works, the bronze of the Idolino di Pesaro, a statue of a young 146 cm high, a Roman copy of a Greek-classical original that was found in fragments at the center of Pesaro in October 1530 in what was a senatorial residence. Who arrived in Florence in 1631 with the heritage of Vittoria Della Rovere; This sculpture, from the Renaissance stand, inspired many artists of the sixteenth century and today has found a striking location at the end of the gallery on the second floor.

The Greek section:
The penthouse ceramic collection is very large and includes a large room with numerous windows on the second floor. Most of the pieces come from Etruscan tombs and are the result of exchanges with Greece, particularly with Athens (the site of most of the finds) and date back to the period between the 6th and 4th centuries BC.

The Egyptian Museum of Florence:
The collection is second only to the Egyptian Museum of Turin in Italy, and housed in some rooms specially decorated on the first floor, originates from the collections Nizzoli and Schiapparelli and the excavation campaign of Ippolito Rosellini and François Champollion. Among the other acquisitions, the papyrus from the excavations of 1934-39 was important. The finds cover many of the day-to-day activities of ancient Egypt, with objects also in fragile materials such as wood, fabric and bone. The exhibition is undergoing gradual reshaping, favoring chronological and topographic criteria rather than thematic.

The numismatic section:
The first nucleus of the numismatic collection was surely already present in the collection of antiquity begun by Lorenzo the Magnificent and, enriched by several family members, was part of the immense artistic patrimony of the family that Elettrice Palatina Anna Maria Luisa, the last descendant of the Medici, He gave his death in 1743 to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany provided that he had never been alienated from Florence and remained for ornamentation of the State for the benefit of the public and to attract the strangers of the Forestieri.

Other sections:
The museum also has many exhibits of other cultures such as the Paleoveneti, the Villanoviani, Anatolia, the High Middle Ages (Plate of Ardaburio Aspare, 434) and Renaissance Renaissance works inspired by the ancient ones (such as Meloria’s bronzes) Or bronze statuettes made up of ancient fragments, some of Benvenuto Cellini’s hand.