Civic Archaeological Museum of Bologna

Brief information

The Archaeological Museum of Bologna grew out of finds made not somewhere in a distant territory, but in the city itself and nearby. The impetus came from Etruscan burials discovered in 1869 near Bologna's Certosa cemetery. The museum is therefore important not only as a collection of antiquities: it shows that beneath modern Bologna lie several earlier urban histories.

Since 1881, the museum has been housed in Palazzo Galvani, specially rebuilt for this purpose. Its exhibition took shape from three sources: excavation finds, the university collection, and the collection of the artist Pelagio Palagi, which the city purchased before the museum opened. This explains the mixed character of the collection: Bologna's local archaeology appears alongside major ancient cultures represented by separate collections.

What to notice first

It is worth noticing the museum's layout itself: the eight sections are designed so that all the collections can be covered in one short tour. This is not simply a list of rooms, but a way to quickly compare different sources of antiquities: local excavations, the university collection, and the Palagi collection.

You can compare the names of the rooms devoted to Bologna itself: the prehistoric period in Room I, Etruscan Bologna in Room X, and Gallic Bologna in Room XI. This sequence helps you read the museum as the history of one place, not only as a series of rare objects. Alongside this are broader sections: the Egyptian collection, the Greek collection in Rooms V and VI, the Etruscan-Italic collection in Room VIII, and the ancient Roman collection in Room IX. The contrast is important: the museum shows Bologna through its proximity to cultures whose objects entered the city's collections.