Description
The Ubaldo Formentini Civic Archaeological Museum is La Spezia's archaeology museum, inside the Castle of San Giorgio, on the hill above the old town where the city was born. It tells the story of the area from prehistory to the Middle Ages, with the ancient statue stelae of the Lunigiana and the marbles of Roman Luni.
The castle is Genoese, from the 14th to 17th centuries. The museum moved around a lot before getting here: civic theater, municipal buildings, high school, the convent of Santa Chiara, Palazzo Crozza. The convent meant to house it was destroyed by bombs in 1943.
It all began in 1873 with the natural history collections donated to the city by Cesare Podenzana. Then the geologist from La Spezia Giovanni Capellini brought in the finds that came up while digging the basins and docks of the Arsenal, and the museum grew along with the city's history.
The visit has two routes. On the lower floor is the territory from the Pleistocene to Romanization, with Neolithic axes and the grave goods from the caves of Palmaria Island and Equi Terme, where the dead were laid in the Copper Age.
The highlight is the statue stelae: warriors with daggers, barely sketched female figures, U-shaped heads with neither eyes nor mouth. The earliest date to the 4th millennium BC. Nineteen originals are kept here, plus a few casts for comparison.
Nobody knows for certain what they represented: perhaps gods, perhaps ancestors turned heroes. For centuries many were destroyed, because they looked like pagan idols. The most recent date to the Iron Age and stand in a room beside the cremation tombs.
On the upper floor is the museum's other soul: Luni, the Roman colony founded in 177 BC that became one of the great export centers for Apuan marble, until in 643 the Lombard king Rothari destroyed it.
The finds come from the collection of the Fabbricotti marble industrialists. Standouts are the busts of Tiberius and of a Julio-Claudian prince, made for public places as propaganda, and a large mosaic with a panther among palms, theatrical masks and winged genii.
The final corridor shows the last days of Luni: marble fragments from the cathedral and objects of the early Middle Ages, including thirty-one gold foils of the 6th-7th century, once sewn onto a garment or an accessory.
Don't miss
• The statue stelae.
• The busts of Tiberius.
• The mosaic with the panther.
• The gold foils.
Did you know?
• On some statue bases from Luni the name has been chiseled away: this is damnatio memoriae, the erasure of memory.
• In 1886 two small stelae were found twelve meters below sea level, in the Gulf of La Spezia. They were later lost.
The castle is Genoese, from the 14th to 17th centuries. The museum moved around a lot before getting here: civic theater, municipal buildings, high school, the convent of Santa Chiara, Palazzo Crozza. The convent meant to house it was destroyed by bombs in 1943.
It all began in 1873 with the natural history collections donated to the city by Cesare Podenzana. Then the geologist from La Spezia Giovanni Capellini brought in the finds that came up while digging the basins and docks of the Arsenal, and the museum grew along with the city's history.
The visit has two routes. On the lower floor is the territory from the Pleistocene to Romanization, with Neolithic axes and the grave goods from the caves of Palmaria Island and Equi Terme, where the dead were laid in the Copper Age.
The highlight is the statue stelae: warriors with daggers, barely sketched female figures, U-shaped heads with neither eyes nor mouth. The earliest date to the 4th millennium BC. Nineteen originals are kept here, plus a few casts for comparison.
Nobody knows for certain what they represented: perhaps gods, perhaps ancestors turned heroes. For centuries many were destroyed, because they looked like pagan idols. The most recent date to the Iron Age and stand in a room beside the cremation tombs.
On the upper floor is the museum's other soul: Luni, the Roman colony founded in 177 BC that became one of the great export centers for Apuan marble, until in 643 the Lombard king Rothari destroyed it.
The finds come from the collection of the Fabbricotti marble industrialists. Standouts are the busts of Tiberius and of a Julio-Claudian prince, made for public places as propaganda, and a large mosaic with a panther among palms, theatrical masks and winged genii.
The final corridor shows the last days of Luni: marble fragments from the cathedral and objects of the early Middle Ages, including thirty-one gold foils of the 6th-7th century, once sewn onto a garment or an accessory.
Don't miss
• The statue stelae.
• The busts of Tiberius.
• The mosaic with the panther.
• The gold foils.
Did you know?
• On some statue bases from Luni the name has been chiseled away: this is damnatio memoriae, the erasure of memory.
• In 1886 two small stelae were found twelve meters below sea level, in the Gulf of La Spezia. They were later lost.