The Museum of the ancient Venetians.

Atestino National Museum of Este

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The Museum of the ancient Venetians... Read More
Atestino National Museum of Este

The first collection of epigraphs, from Roman times, was assembled by the nobleman Giorgio Contarini in the early seventeenth century; this first collection was gradually enriched with material from tomb furnishings discovered in Este in the second half of the nineteenth century. The nucleus of today’s Atestino National Museum of Este is owed however to Vincenzo Fracanzani, magistrate of Este, who in 1834 decided to institute a collection initially called Civic Lapidary Museum, at first located in the church of St. Francis, adjacent to the Oratory of Saint Mary. This location proved to be inadequate and the State instituted the National Museum (decree of 1 April 1887) and transferred it to Palazzo Mocenigo. The museum, was restructured in the early eighties and was opened again to the public in 1984. The tour winds through eleven halls starting on the first floor. Below are briefly illustrated the most interesting itineraries both in the pre-Roman section (halls I-V) and in the Roman one (halls VI-X). In the first hall artefacts are assembled ranging from the Eneolithic Age (III millennium BC) to the Bronze Age and the very beginning of the Iron Age (IX century BC). There are remarkable artefacts in stone and ceramics as well as many clay vases in various forms made of a reddish mixture. The second hall is devoted to the villages of the Iron Age, pertaining to the town and its territory; there are collections of fibulas in bronze and semi-worked iron, tools for weaving, earthen vases. There are a great many examples of kitchen and eating pottery in this hall. In the third hall, devoted to the ancient burial cults, artefacts are assembled relating to the principal necropolises in Este in the IX-III centuries BC. The itinerary winds through about seventy tomb furnishings. The most valuable object here is the bronze statue “Benvenuti”, dating back to approximately 600BC; it is a cup in beaten and chiselled bronze featuring zoomorphic figures and scenes from daily life. The fourth hall collects the ex-votives from Este’s places of cult, the most important of which lay along the course of the Adige and was devoted to the goddess Reitia, a healing divinity. The fifth hall exhibits the most recent pre-Roman finds in Veneto. In the sixth hall, the first of the Roman section, Romanization of the territory is documented through the collection of archaeological, epigraphic and linguistic documents. Besides this, there are beautiful tomb furnishings with elegant silver jewels and a large amount of grey ceramics. The material in the seventh halls consists mainly of public inscriptions naming the people covering determined positions. The eighth hall is devoted to the necropolises, and burial monuments are presented divided by type (inhumation or incineration) and form (altars, niches, slabs, sarcophagi, etc.). In the ninth and tenth halls the objects exhibited are linked to domestic and economic activities, and there are also jewels and objects for personal hygiene and beauty. The museum tour ends in the twelfth hall, where the objects exhibited are from much more recent epochs, early Middle Ages, Middle Ages and Renaissance, and they come from demolished buildings.

Info
Via Guido Negri 9/c, Este (PD)
Tel +39 0429 2085
Fax +39 0429 603996
[email protected]
www.atestino.beniculturali.it