Description
The Samnite Museum, now the National Archaeological Museum of Campobasso, tells the story of the land of the Samnites, today's Molise, from prehistory to the early Middle Ages. It is housed in the 16th-century Palazzo Mazzarotta, in the heart of the historic center, and it is the oldest museum in the region.
The route climbs through time floor by floor. Down below are the oldest periods, with Paleolithic and Neolithic finds from villages and necropolises; on the middle floor, Samnite civilization, from its birth to its decline, through cities, sanctuaries and tombs.
On the top floor, in the large central hall, the Roman section lines up sculptures, trade goods, grave goods, oil lamps and architectural pieces.
The most striking piece is in the early medieval rooms: the burials of the Campochiaro horsemen, reconstructed with the horse buried beside its rider. They probably belonged to the Bulgars whom the Lombard duchy of Benevento settled at the foot of the Matese.
Alongside are women's gold and silver jewelry, belts and warriors' weapons.
Along the way, some objects are shown doing their old job. There is a reconstructed loom with its weights and spindle whorls, a wooden sandal among the objects for personal care, and the thymiaterion, a terracotta incense burner from the small temple of Gildone.
The museum was founded in 1881, just after Italian unification, together with the "Pasquale Albino" provincial library. In 1889 the archaeologist Antonio Sogliano arranged the collection in four groups: people, the home, activities, cults.
More than a century of wandering followed: the museum moved several times, always together with the library. Through the moves and the thefts, especially during the Second World War, many pieces were lost: of the roughly two thousand original objects, five hundred remain.
After some twenty years of closure, in 1995 it found a permanent home in Palazzo Mazzarotta. The old collection has been joined by finds from excavations in Molise, both on the coast and inland.
The route climbs through time floor by floor. Down below are the oldest periods, with Paleolithic and Neolithic finds from villages and necropolises; on the middle floor, Samnite civilization, from its birth to its decline, through cities, sanctuaries and tombs.
On the top floor, in the large central hall, the Roman section lines up sculptures, trade goods, grave goods, oil lamps and architectural pieces.
The most striking piece is in the early medieval rooms: the burials of the Campochiaro horsemen, reconstructed with the horse buried beside its rider. They probably belonged to the Bulgars whom the Lombard duchy of Benevento settled at the foot of the Matese.
Alongside are women's gold and silver jewelry, belts and warriors' weapons.
Along the way, some objects are shown doing their old job. There is a reconstructed loom with its weights and spindle whorls, a wooden sandal among the objects for personal care, and the thymiaterion, a terracotta incense burner from the small temple of Gildone.
The museum was founded in 1881, just after Italian unification, together with the "Pasquale Albino" provincial library. In 1889 the archaeologist Antonio Sogliano arranged the collection in four groups: people, the home, activities, cults.
More than a century of wandering followed: the museum moved several times, always together with the library. Through the moves and the thefts, especially during the Second World War, many pieces were lost: of the roughly two thousand original objects, five hundred remain.
After some twenty years of closure, in 1995 it found a permanent home in Palazzo Mazzarotta. The old collection has been joined by finds from excavations in Molise, both on the coast and inland.