National Archaeological Museum of Palestrina

ONLY 14 MINUTES FROM OUR HOTEL

The National Archaeological Museum of Palestrina is housed in the Renaissance Barberini palace, on the top of the ancient sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia. In the halls of the Museum, spread over three floors, are exhibited the most important finds from ancient Praeneste and its territory, sorted by major themes that embrace the main aspects of the history, culture and artistic productions of one of the most important and flourishing cities of ancient Lazio. The rooms on the first floor house works relating to the Fortuna Fortuna cult, Roman copies of Greek masterpieces, honorary statues, portraits and reliefs from the Republican and imperial age. The Augustan age dates back to one of the famous reliefs Grimani, admirable artistic expression of pacification and rebirth, perhaps the work of the same sculptors who decorated the Ara Pacis in Rome. On the second floor are exhibited materials found in the necropolises depicting rare versions of ancient Greek and Italic myths, and numerous votive and architectural terracottas from the city's sanctuaries. On the third floor, a single room houses the magnificent polychrome mosaic of the Nile, a perspective view of the Egyptian landscape during the flooding of the Nile, built by Alexandrian artists at the end of II a.C. It is one of the largest and most important Hellenistic mosaics preserved, an absolute masterpiece for composition, chromatic taste and richness of details. In the archaeological area in front of the Museum it is possible to visit the imposing remains of the sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia, structured in a series of artificial terraces connected by ramps and stairways. It represents the greatest example of Hellenistic architecture in Italy, inspired by the monumental scenographic complexes of the eastern Aegean, so much so as to be chosen as "Italian Meraviglia" to represent the Lazio region as part of a project promoted by the National Youth Forum on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy.

Free entrance for all visitors on the first Sunday of each month