The National Archaeological Museum of Taranto is among the most important in Italy and was established in 1887. From the beginning, the Museum occupied the former Convent of the Alcantarine Friars, built in the mid-18th century and, following expansion interventions in the mid-20th century, the adjacent northern wing of the Ceschi Wing. Since 1998, renovation works began leading to the partial reopening of the Museum to the public on December 21, 2007.
From December 22, 2013, new exhibition sections dedicated to the Roman city, the late antique and early medieval city up to the Byzantine refounding of the 11th century AD were reopened to the public.
In addition to the spaces already accessible, all integrated with the exhibition of new artifacts (funerary monuments, figured vases, mosaics, painted plasters, furnishings), new rooms will be available dedicated to the rich documentation of Taranto’s productions and Roman-era imports, as well as the varied funerary equipment of the city’s necropolis, from the conquest by Q. Fabius Maximus in 209 BC to the 3rd century AD. The showcases highlight beautiful goldsmith works, enriched with glass paste and colored stones, polychrome terracottas still of Greek tradition, bones, ivories, and especially imported colored glass which characterizes the cremation burials of the imperial era, up to fragments of exceptional elegance from a marble sarcophagus depicting a naval assault scene.
The section dedicated to the city from late antiquity to the Byzantine age offers extensive documentation of mosaic floors from public and private buildings, with polychrome geometric and figurative motifs and materials from recent stratigraphic excavations (Villa Peripato, Palazzo delli Ponti, Cathedral of St. Cataldo) which have provided relevant data for the reconstruction of the ancient center during these chronological phases. The last room also includes funerary inscriptions of Jews, Christians and Muslims, documenting the presence in Taranto of people of diverse cultures and religions between the 4th and 11th centuries AD.
The section dedicated to the Museum’s history has been completely renovated, with the reconstruction of period settings from the era of Q. Quagliati and C. Drago and with the exhibition of purchases and donations received by the Museum from the late 19th century to today, featuring figured vases of import and local production, stolen from archaeological sites in the Apulian territory, ended up in foreign museums, and now returned for public enjoyment at MARTA.
A new exhibition setting has also been reserved for paintings donated by Monsignor Ricciardi to the Museum in the early 1900s, in a mezzanine-level space overlooking Room IX.
Information about the National Archaeological Museum of Taranto
Via Cavour, 10
74100 Taranto (Taranto)
0994532112
museoarch.taranto@beniculturali.it
Source: MIBACT
