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 Jesuits’ College had hosted the collection of antiquities and various curiosities assembled 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 promotion of the paleolithic and ethnoanthropological heritage preserved in our country. Its origin, as a scientific and protection institution, dates back to 1875, the year the “Royal National Prehistoric Ethnographic Museum of Rome” was founded in the Palazzo del Collegio Romano.
According to the founder’s intentions, Luigi Pigorini, the new institution was born not only to collect in a “central” museum, in the new capital of the Kingdom, the documentation of both Italian, European, and extra-European prehistoric cultures and the cultures of the so-called contemporary “primitive” populations, but above all to give a unified scientific approach to paleolithic studies and research in Italy.
Since its foundation, the “Royal National Prehistoric Ethnographic Museum of Rome” has thus performed a fundamental role in promoting and coordinating excavations of Italian prehistoric sites, alongside an intense and innovative high-level training activity with the conduct, at the Museum, of courses of the first university chair of Paleontology established in Italy, as well as a constant and extraordinary scientific dissemination activity with the creation, in the same founding year of the Museum, of one of the first European journals dedicated to prehistoric disciplines, the Bullettino di Paletnologia Italiana. In 1940, the Museum became the seat of the Superintendence (the Superintendence 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 in the Palazzo delle Scienze, at EUR, established as a permanent section of the National Prehistoric Ethnographic Museum “L. Pigorini,” still in the historic Collegio Romano headquarters.
In 1968, by decree of Minister Gui (Ministerial Decree of March 4, 1968, art. 1, paragraph 5), the Superintendence of Rome V was named Superintendence of Prehistory and Ethnography.
Between 1975 and 1977 the entire National Prehistoric Ethnographic Museum was transferred to the Palazzo delle Scienze at EUR, to vacate the Collegio Romano premises for the new Ministry for Cultural and Environmental Heritage. With the organization of the new Ministry, the Museum remained part of the Special Institute renamed Special Superintendence of the National Prehistoric Ethnographic Museum “L. Pigorini”.
Within the framework of the founding law of the Ministry for Cultural and Environmental Heritage, the Special Superintendence was confirmed as a technical body for 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 Ministry’s organization, the Superintendence is no longer “Special,” but its institutional tasks remain unchanged.
 nel centro della città, in un'ala del Palazzo del Collegio Romano edificato alla fine del Cinquecento dalla Compagnia di Gesù.){kind=link}