Museo Archeologico Nazionale d'Abruzzo

• 1. Introduction

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  The Museo Archeologico Nazionale d'Abruzzo, the National Archaeology Museum of Abruzzo, occupies a former private villa in Chieti, Abruzzo. During the 35th G8 summit, staff there showed Barack Obama, President of the United States, the Warrior of Capestrano. That encounter raises the two questions this documentary sets out to answer. How did a private home built for a baron become a state museum, and what else fills its rooms besides the Warrior of Capestrano?

• 2. A Baron's Legacy

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  In around 1830, the Neapolitan architect Enrico Riccio built the villa for Baron Frigerj, the residence that would eventually house the museum. The comune of Chieti later purchased that villa, taking control of the property years before any museum existed there. Valerio Cianfarani, director of the local soprintendenza, worked with the comune of Chieti to found the museum. The comune then sold the Frigerj residence to the Italian State. On the 14th of June 1959, the museum was inaugurated with Giovanni Gronchi, President of the Italian Republic, in attendance.

  The Neoclassical building is faced in smoothly covered brick and marked by windows topped with gables. It stands inside the Villa comunale, the urban park at the center of Chieti. Visitors enter through what was once the passage for carriages, now the gallery entrance on the ground floor. A monumental scissor staircase, supported by Doric columns, connects that ground-floor gallery to the first floor above.

  That staircase carries visitors upward, from the ground-floor galleries toward a first floor devoted to the ancient peoples who once lived across Abruzzo.

• 3. Two Floors Of Antiquity

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  The museum's holdings run from Prehistory to Late antiquity, covering most of Abruzzo's important archaeological finds. On the ground floor, Roman and pre-Roman sculptures share space with Roman iconographies. Nearby stands the Lady of Capestrano, a headless female statue discovered together with the Warrior. Also on display is a monumental marble statue of Hercules from Alba Fucens. A smaller bronze statue depicts Hercules Curinus, brought from a sanctuary on the slopes of Mount Morrone.

  Three funerary stelae from Penna Sant'Andrea bear a paleosabellic inscription. Nearby lie aristocratic funeral beds belonging to the cismontane Vestini people. Two more carved works, the Stele of Guardiagrele and the Torso of Rapino, both date to the 7th century BC. Upstairs, the first floor traces the history of four ancient peoples of Abruzzo: the Vestini, the Peligni, the Carricini, and the Marrucini.

  Nearby, another cabinet still waits, holding a lawyer's private gift to the museum.

• 4. Coins And A Collector

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  Giovanni Pansa, a lawyer and scholar, built his own collection of antiquities and donated it to the museum in 1954. That gift included different bronze figures and other antiquities, still displayed on the ground floor alongside the Roman and pre-Roman sculptures.

  The museum's numismatic collection numbers in the thousands, spanning coins struck from the 4th century BC to the era of Italian unification. Among them is a rare golden coin bearing the face of Galba. That coin now sits inside a collection filling the museum's ground floor alongside Giovanni Pansa's donated bronzes.