CERASUOLO

In September 2012 the Museo Civico Archeologico-Virtuale di Narce (MAVNA) was created in order to display a collection of archaeological material found at Narce (8th to 2nd centuries BCE) and until now stored in the city hall but never before on public display.

In addition to this collection, the Museum has undertaken an ambitious project to present the “virtual” return of antiquities discovered in the archaeological site of Narce and preserved in various museums in Italy, Europe and abroad. Material sold abroad in the late Nineteen century was legally distributed however a problem has arisen today with clandestine excavations. The Museum seeks to instill in the public and especially the young generation respect for the preservation of the cultural patrimony of Mazzano Romano and thus to disincentivize the plague of clandestine excavations.

From 1890 until 1902 the excavations at Narce supported the discovery of twenty-one necropoleis distributed over the hills surrounding this Faliscan settlement. During those years over two thousand tombs were brought to light. Approximately a fifth of the archaeological material found was acquired by the State and today is displayed or stored in the Italian museums which hold antiquities from Narce. The remainder of the material was obtained by foreign Institutions and Museums and by private collectors.

The publications which followed these discoveries have made it possible to recognize a part of the material found in Mazzano in the collections of European Museums (Paris, Copenhagen, London), in Museums in the United States (Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington DC) and very probably in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro).

All these materials were legally acquired and are today visited by thousands of tourists each year.

The MAVNA museum plans to display finds already in our collections and does not seek the return of any Faliscan object from abroad. Rather we wish to display images of foreign collections in order to dramatize to our local visitors the importance of archaeological finds and the significance accorded to Faliscan culture by foreign scholars and institutions.

We wish thus to join in a single museum, by means of temporary and virtual exhibitions, the material preserved in other parts of the world.

Each year the Museum will present a different selection of material according to different themes. The first exhibition will be “Ancient princesses of Narce across the World: Faliscan daughters, wives, and mothers between the 8th and 7th centuries BCE”.

The exhibition will consist in a series of reconstructions of Faliscan funerary customs and practices portrayed virtually through grave goods today dispersed all over the world (reproduction of archaeological materials, architectural elements from the ancient city, 3D reconstructions, access to digitized archival documents, excavation notebooks, drawings as well as projected scenes of the Narce landscape).

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