Opened in 1967 in the Palazzo delle Scienze at EUR with the aim of providing Rome with an archaeological museum of the post-classical age and promoting research on a strategic period for the study of the transformation of the ancient world, the Museum displays materials dating between the 4th and 14th centuries, mostly from Rome and central Italy.
From late antique Rome (4th-6th centuries) come three imperial portraits, some votive and funerary inscriptions, and a precious gold crossbow fibula with openwork decoration. Following are testimonies of the Lombard occupation in Umbria and the Marche (6th-7th centuries) with the two most important necropolises of central Italy (Nocera Umbra and Castel Trosino), which form the core of excellence with their sets of weapons, jewelry, ivories, glass, and bronze and ceramic vessels.
The succeeding Carolingian age is illustrated by a substantial group of marble reliefs from the architectural decoration of churches in Rome and Lazio, deeply renovated at the time of the “Carolingian renaissance” (9th-10th centuries). From the same period come the furnishings and everyday objects from two papal agricultural estates, the domusculte of S. Cornelia and S. Rufina, created in the Roman countryside to supply the city (late 8th-10th centuries) and continued with other functions until the high Middle Ages.
The path concludes with the “Coptic” collection made up of reliefs and textiles that provide a significant example of artistic production from late antique and early medieval Egypt (5th-10th centuries).
Also exhibited in the Museum is the extraordinary opus sectile decoration (inlay of colored marbles) that adorned the representative hall of a monumental domus outside Porta Marina in Ostia.
