Museo della Citta e del Territorio

Set inside eighteenth-century farm buildings that trace the curve of the Roman theatre, Sepino's Museum of the City and Territory presents local finds from Palaeolithic tools of the Tammaro valley to Roman banquet ware and medieval objects.

Why it matters

The museum's collection is local: it includes finds recovered within the archaeological area of Altilia-Saepinum or the surrounding territory. The galleries present material from the same landscape as the Roman city outside.

The building is part of the story. The museum occupies rural structures of the eighteenth century built onto the Roman theatre, following its curved shape, and the older semicircle of the cavea had been progressively absorbed into these farm buildings from the 1700s onward. Original fittings survive in the rooms, including a stone sink, hearth, oven and storage niches. The structure preserves evidence of both Roman and rural use.

What to notice

The first rooms contain Palaeolithic stone tools from across the middle Tammaro valley, including San Giuliano del Sannio, Cercemaggiore, the Sepino mountainside and Santa Croce del Sannio. Hellenistic material from the fourth to first centuries BC follows. Roman rooms present tableware and objects connected with pastimes, crafts and funerary rites, drawing on houses and tombs excavated in the area. The medieval section includes a bronze ring fibula bearing a Germanic female name. Photographs document the theatre before the museum's construction, whose walls follow the curve of the seating.

Context and history

The museum belongs to the Parco Archeologico di Sepino, the Ministry of Culture institute established in 2021, which also manages the surrounding archaeological area. The rural buildings on the Roman theatre were adapted for the exhibition while retaining evidence of their agricultural character.