The museum has been housed since 1985 in the former Monastery of Sant’Agostino. Starting from 1995, extensive reorganization and expansion works began to improve the exhibition sections, ensuring a new and updated representation of the Verucchio civilization, also thanks to a comprehensive documentary and educational apparatus and display arrangements that allow a truly complete perception of this articulated and complex archaeological reality. Although the very first reports of archaeological findings in the Verucchio area date back to the 17th century, it is from the second half of the last century that discoveries related to the ancient Villanovan settlement multiplied, opening the first insights into this extraordinary local reality of the Iron Age. The materials found at that time and those brought to light on various other occasions, following chance discoveries or during more recent excavation campaigns, are now housed in the museum.
During the early Iron Age, in the time span between the beginning of the 9th century BC and the mid-7th century BC, Verucchio was the main center of the Villanovan cultural groups firmly settled in the heart of the Romagna hinterland, home to a presumably hut settlement that occupied the top of the rocky spur overlooking the Marecchia river course. The site was characteristically surrounded by a series of necropolises made up of hundreds of tombs arranged along the slopes of the hill, corresponding to ancient roads that, leaving the settlement, connected it with the surrounding territory. Located in a privileged position, in close topographical contiguity with the natural corridor represented by the Marecchia Valley and the Tiber Valley, a real crossroads for controlling commercial traffic from the Tusco-Latian area to the north and vice versa, the Villanovan center ultimately extended its influence widely over the surrounding territory from the sea to the hilly area, also developing a strong urban and social organization. Evidence of a well-defined community structure and the presence of high-ranking social figures are the numerous tombs with their related burial goods discovered at the foot of the hill. Amid the general richness of the burials, an evident sign of widespread prosperity, some ‘princely’ funerary sets stand out, composed of objects of exceptional value (weapons, shields, personal ornaments, goldsmithing, ambers, jewelry, furniture, pottery). The sets are displayed in chronological order, and for some, the original tomb context has been fully reconstructed, respecting the shape and dimensions of its original structure and, where possible, the arrangement of the objects inside it. Of absolute importance and extreme rarity, among the rich array of testimonies returned by the Verucchio tombs, are various preserved organic materials (foods and food offerings, textiles, wicker objects, wooden artifacts), whose preservation is due to the particular quality of the sediments in which the funerary-related finds were buried. Among these are wooden furnishings (tables, stools, thrones, footrests, chests, and boxes of all kinds). From the ‘Lippi 89’ tomb comes a very rare and precious throne, carved with figurative scenes. Also unique are the wool textiles, including a large toga, and the massive quantity of amber ornaments, a very sought-after and traded raw material in antiquity, for which Verucchio was one of the main distribution centers. Since 2005, research campaigns have resumed in the Lippi necropolis, which yielded over fifty new extraordinary tombs with associated funerary goods, some of which have already been restored and made available to the public in the recently completed “New Excavations” hall, the latest to be finished. Other Verucchio artifacts are preserved at the Rimini City Museum and the Bologna Civic Archaeological Museum, where, alongside objects found during excavations conducted by Edoardo Brizio at the end of the last century, the very rich equipment of a tomb from the Lippi cemetery is also kept.
Information on Verucchio Civic Archaeological Museum
Via Sant’Agostino,
47826 Verucchio (Rimini)
0541670280
iat.verucchio@iper.net
Source: MIBACT
