Museo Civico Archeologico e Pinacoteca Edilberto Rosa

Why it matters

The Edilberto Rosa Civic Archaeological Museum and Art Gallery in Amelia preserves archaeological material from ancient Ameria and paintings from the city's churches and palaces. Its collections include the bronze statue of Germanicus, discovered near the city walls in 1963. The museum opened in 2001 in the former Collegio Boccarini.

What to notice

The bronze Germanicus is shown in a military cuirass in the adlocutio pose, associated with a commander's address to troops. Its breastplate includes a relief of Achilles and Troilus. The archaeological collections include funerary objects from Umbrian and Roman necropoleis, an imperial-era funerary altar and a capital carved with trophies and ship rams. The pinacoteca includes paintings from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, including a panel of Saint Anthony Abbot by Piermatteo d'Amelia.

Context and history

The museum occupies the former Collegio Boccarini, whose complex began as a Franciscan convent in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and received a double-loggia cloister in the sixteenth. After secularization in the nineteenth century, the building became a boarding college. It was restored and reopened as a cultural centre in 2001, with the archaeological museum and picture gallery arranged around the cloister. The collections trace the territory from pre-Roman settlements through the medieval and Renaissance periods.