Musei Civici di Velletri

Velletri's civic museums bring together archaeology, geology and the city's buried history in the sixteenth-century Palazzo Comunale. The complex includes the Oreste Nardini Archaeological Museum, the Civic Museum of Geopaleontology and Prehistory of the Colli Albani, and the archaeological area of the Holy Stigmata.

Why it matters

The museums preserve material from Velletri and the surrounding territory, from protohistory to the Middle Ages. Their archaeological collection began with Oreste Nardini, who gathered and protected finds in the early twentieth century. Among its best-known works is the second-century Sarcophagus of the Labours of Hercules, also called the Sarcophagus of Velletri.

What to notice

The collection includes the painted architectural slabs known as the Lastre Volsche, found near the church of the Holy Stigmata in 1910 and now attributed to a sixth-century-BC Italic-Etruscan school. The Sarcophagus of the Labours of Hercules presents a crowded series of mythological figures. Other notable pieces include the Civitana child's sarcophagus, discovered in 1980, a fourth-century Christian burial slab with an orant figure, and a plaster cast of the Pallade di Velletri, whose original is in the Louvre.

Context and history

The civic collection opened in 1920 under Nardini's direction. After wartime losses and the discovery of the Hercules sarcophagus in 1955, the museum reopened in 1956. Later reorganisations and restoration campaigns expanded the displays and connected them with geology, prehistory and the excavated layers of the Holy Stigmata. Together, these collections trace both the material culture of Velletri and the volcanic landscape of the Colli Albani.