Museo Archeologico Claudia Giontella

Terni's archaeological museum presents the archaeological history of Interamna Nahars: Iron Age necropolis material from the Naharti people, Roman inscriptions and statues, and the marble Telamone found in 1971. It is named for the archaeologist Claudia Giontella, who drove its creation, and shares the CAOS cultural centre.

Why it matters

The museum presents Terni’s history from its pre-Roman origins onward. The city’s history reaches back before Rome to the Naharti, a proto-Umbrian people settled along the Nahar, today’s Nera river; the collection’s protohistoric section is its largest. Founded in 2004 and named for the archaeologist whose work shaped its layout, the museum gives a small city a full account of more than two millennia, from cremation tombs of the tenth century BC to the marble statues of an imperial municipium. Its collections illuminate other remains in the town, including the Roman walls, amphitheatre and temples on Monte Torre Maggiore.

What to notice

The collection is arranged in two sections. In the protohistoric rooms, the funerary material comes from three excavated necropolises: the Acciaierie cemetery, the largest, used mainly between the tenth and eighth centuries BC; the Ex Poligrafico Alterocca site; and San Pietro in Campo, with finds of the seventh and sixth centuries BC. Excavations found two burials in one grave, with the individuals aged roughly nine to fourteen; their sex and any family relationship remain undetermined. The tomb dates to the late eighth or early seventh century BC. In the Roman section, the Telamone is a monumental white marble figure found in Terni in 1971; its patron and original destination remain unknown. Then trace the epigraphy: the sacred dedication of the amphitheatre, a monumental inscription recording the completion of the Roman theatre, a relief of Mithras killing the bull, sarcophagi including one from the San Valentino cemetery area, and Julio-Claudian statues brought from nearby Carsulae.

Context and history

The museum opened in 2004 inside the CAOS complex, Centro Arti Opificio Siri, a cultural district created by recovering the disused SIRI industrial works on Via Franco Molè. That setting matters: a city famous for twentieth-century steelmaking chose to house its oldest evidence in a converted twentieth-century factory, making the building part of the argument. The museum is named after Claudia Giontella, the archaeologist who played a decisive role in its creation and layout. Its collections also absorbed material bequeathed to the city by Elia Rossi Passavanti, podestà of Terni in 1928, who left his palazzo and his archaeological holdings to the municipality. The displays trace a local sequence from Naharti settlement through the Roman municipium of Interamna Nahars, whose walls were likely raised in the third century BC, to the late-antique Christian burial ground around the shrine of Saint Valentine.