Il museo

The Archaeological Museum and the “Edilberto Rosa” Picture Gallery are, together with the Historical Archive and the Municipal Library, in the ex-Collegio Boccarini which was originally a Franciscan convent dated to the 14th-15th centuries with a cloister with a double loggia of the 17th century.
The archaeological collection thus provides a chronologically complete overview of the history of Amelia, which should be an integral part of any visitor’s tour of the town, where the widespread recycling of Roman-age and early mediaeval architectural elements, fragments of sculptures, epigraphs and sarcophagi, has turned the streets and alleyways of the historic centre into a sort of vast open-air museum. Excavations underneath grave goods (4th-1st centuries B.C.), number of bronze objects, including mirrors and banquet containers. A dog skeleton was found in the necropolis, it was buried near a tomb of a child.

The most important of these finds were the pieces of the remarkable bronze statue of the Roman military officer Nerone Claudio Druso known as Germanicus that were found in 1963. The statue stands some two metres high. He is dressed in full armour exhorting the troops.  His breastplate is fine decorated.

The museum collection includes also numerous inscriptions and funerary urns relating to the Gens Roscia, the Roscius family of Ameria that was mentioned by Cicero.
The funerary altar, which is beautifully carved on three sides, commemorates Dionysus: a beautiful example of marble altar dated to the 1st century A.D. The relief on the front, above a garland, depicts the birth of Dionysus. 

The picture gallery consists for the most part of 16th-17th century paintings originating from churches and numerous palaces in Amelia which was at that time the greatest centre of irradiation of Roman late-Mannerist taste in the region.
This period is testified by numerous paintings which are particularly worthy of mention such as the Sant’Antonio Abate painted by Piermatteo d’Amelia, one of the greatest masters of the Renaissance period in Umbria. The work was commissioned by the Franciscans of the Convent of San Giovanni. The panel depicts St. Antony enthroned with his usual attributes, including a pilgrim’s staff and a pig at his feet.

Servizi

Indirizzo

Piazza A. Vera, 10
05022 Amelia (Terni)

• 0744 978120
• amelia@sistemamuseo.it

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Other museums in the city

• Cisterna Romana
• Palazzo Petrignani