Lapidario Romano del Museo Civico

Modena's Roman Lapidary in Palazzo dei Musei preserves funerary monuments and inscriptions from the necropoleis of Roman Mutina.

Why it matters

The monuments document the social and economic life of the Roman colony along the Via Emilia. Inscriptions identify residents with different occupations and statuses, from military officers to craftspeople and freedpeople, while the scale and quality of the tombs reflect Mutina's wealth.

What to notice

The four-metre tomb monument of Vetilia Egloge, discovered in 2007, preserves an inscription recording a freedwoman of Greek origin and her family. A funerary altar to the centurion Clodius, a fragment depicting a ship's prow, and stelae of the barber Lucius Rubrius Stabilio and cloth-dyer Gaius Purpurarius Nicephor illustrate the range of Roman lives represented. A frieze with deities and sea creatures dates to the mid-first century BC.

Context and history

The museum's Roman collection includes material from necropoleis outside Mutina's ancient perimeter, especially along the Via Emilia to the east. The monuments were recovered through archaeological work from the post-war decades onward and arranged in topographic groups. Other excavated material remains in the museum's study collections, continuing research into the ancient city and its population.