Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Sarsina

About

Sarsina, hometown of the greatest Roman comic playwright Plautus, is a small town in the Appenines, far from the Adriatic Coast. In this picturesque village lies a small treasure that only few people know. In an ancient palace of the old town is located the Archaeological Museum, one of the most important museums of Roman civilization in northern Italy, for the richness and variety of its exhibits. The finds, almost exclusively of local origin, covering an extended range of time, from Prehistory to Late antiquity, but particularly from the Roman period, testify that Sarsina, a small community on the Apennines, in the past was not an insignificant and isolated village but rather a centre of profitable trade. The exhibition opens with a large group of funerary inscriptions that offer a cross-section of the ancient Sassina. Of exceptional interest is the large mosaic polychrome floor called the “Triumph of Dionysus”. Very important are also the references of many cults, linked to the Greek world (Jupiter, Minerva, Apollo), to the Italic-Roman tradition and to the Eastern world. In the museum is kept, in fact, a group of statues representing Phrygian and Egyptian deities, which constituted the most important shrines dedicated to these cults in northern Italy.

At a glance

• Typical visit: about 1 hour 30 minutes