Il Prehistoric Ethnographic Museum of Rome was inaugurated on March 14, 1876 by Luigi Pigorini (1842-1925) in the city center, in a wing of the Palazzo del Collegio Romano built at the end of the sixteenth century by the Society of Jesus. Since the seventeenth century, the Jesuit College had hosted a collection of antiquities and various curiosities gathered by Father Athanasius Kircher.
The Superintendence of the National Prehistoric Ethnographic Museum “Luigi Pigorini” of Rome has, since its foundation, been the center of excellence in research and the promotion of the paletnological and ethnoanthropological heritage preserved in our country. Its origin, as a scientific and protective institution, dates back to 1875, the year in which the “Royal National Prehistoric Ethnographic Museum of Rome” was founded in the Palazzo del Collegio Romano.
According to the intentions of the founder, Luigi Pigorini, the new institution was born not only to collect in a “central” museum, in the new capital of the Kingdom, documentation of both Italian, European, and extra-European prehistoric cultures as well as the cultures of so-called “primitive” contemporary populations, but above all to provide a unified scientific approach to paletnological studies and research in Italy.
Since its foundation, the “Royal National Prehistoric Ethnographic Museum of Rome” has therefore played a fundamental role in promoting and coordinating excavations of Italian prehistoric sites, alongside an intense and innovative high-level training activity with the holding, at the Museum, of courses of the first university chair of Paletnology established in Italy, as well as a constant and extraordinary scientific dissemination activity with the creation, in the same year as the Museum’s foundation, of one of the first European journals dedicated to prehistoric disciplines, the Bulletin of Italian Paletnology. In 1940, the Museum became the seat of the Superintendence (the Superintendency of Antiquities of Rome V).
On the occasion of the VI International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences, held in Rome in 1962, the “Museum of Prehistory and Protohistory of Lazio” was inaugurated at the Palazzo delle Scienze, at EUR, established as a permanent section of the National Prehistoric Ethnographic Museum “L. Pigorini”, still in the historic seat of the Collegio Romano.
In 1968, by decree of Minister Gui (Ministerial Decree March 4, 1968, art. 1, paragraph 5), the Superintendency of Rome V was named Superintendency of Prehistory and Ethnography.
Between 1975 and 1977 the entire National Prehistoric Ethnographic Museum was moved to the Palazzo delle Scienze at EUR, to free the premises of the Collegio Romano for the new Ministry of Cultural and Environmental Heritage. With the organization of the new Ministry, the Museum remained part of the Special Institute renamed Special Superintendency of the National Prehistoric Ethnographic Museum “L. Pigorini”.
Within the framework of the establishment law of the Ministry of Cultural and Environmental Heritage, the Special Superintendency was confirmed as the technical body for the conservation, protection, museum and monumental enhancement, and research both in the field of Prehistory and Protohistory and in the field of Ethnography.
In the new organization of the Ministry, the Superintendency is no longer “Special”, but its institutional tasks have remained unchanged.
 nel centro della città, in un'ala del Palazzo del Collegio Romano edificato alla fine del Cinquecento dalla Compagnia di Gesù.){kind=link}