Museo Archeologico Statale di Urbs Salvia

Two floors in the centre of Urbisaglia hold what the earth has given back from Urbs Salvia, the Roman city at the foot of the hill. Established in 1996 as a national museum, it gathers two centuries of excavation finds, including a marble krater and fragments of important Roman public inscriptions.

Why it matters

The collection is drawn from nineteenth-century digs and recent campaigns in the archaeological site of Urbs Salvia next to the town. The collection presents the material culture of one ancient community, including objects, inscriptions and decoration from its theatre, temple terrace and amphitheatre.

What to notice

The ground floor centres on a neo-Attic krater, a large vase carved from Greek Pentelic marble and decorated in low relief with two groups of three female figures, read as nymphs performing a processional dance. It dates to the Augustan age, surfaced during excavations by the University of Macerata in 2005 and 2006, and most likely furnished an upscale residence of the ancient city. Behind it stretches a watercolour of Roman Urbs Salvia by the illustrator J.C. Golvin, setting the monuments you can still see into a reconstructed skyline. Also downstairs: two painted roof tiles recovered when the conduit of the Roman aqueduct was first explored in 1854, a small limestone votive altar, a fragmentary bust of a togatus, and a room devoted to the city's great temple of Salus Augusta with two Corinthian capitals from the sanctuary area.

Upstairs the story turns epigraphic. Architectural fragments from the public buildings hang near lead-stamped bricks bearing the name M. Attius Fabatus, evidence of a workshop owned by the sanctuary of the goddess Salus. Two omphaloi, hemispherical objects carved with symbols of the cult of Apollo, sit in the same room as fragments of the Fasti consulares and the Fasti triumphales, the official lists of consuls and triumphators: these fragments preserve a valuable record of Roman public memory. A corridor of household utensils leads to rooms dedicated to the theatre.

Context and history

The museum was instituted in 1996 to give Urbs Salvia's finds a home in the town itself; much of the material had previously been displayed in the National Archaeological Museum of Ancona. Its foundation closed a circle that began with the first digs of the nineteenth century, including the 1854 exploration of the Roman aqueduct, and continued with the University of Macerata's campaigns of the 2000s. The museum complements the archaeological park, bringing excavated objects and inscriptions together with the remains of the ancient city.