Antiquarium Museum
Small museum exhibiting the exceptional finds from the ancient Picentes necropolis of Numana and Sirolo, discovered during the excavation campaign carried out between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the following decade.
The excavations, which are still in progress, have brought to light over five hundred Picentese burials that have made Numana the most important centre of the Picentes in the proto-historic age. Of the three necropolis areas relating to ancient Numana, the Necropolis of the Pines in Sirolo can be visited (booking required). This is the only archaeological area in the Marche region where it is possible to visit a sector of a necropolis with illustrated educational panels placed along the visitor's route. It is the place where the tomb of the Picenum Queen from the end of the 6th century B.C. was discovered. It is from this tomb that the jewel kept in the Museo Antiquarium Statale comes: the rich and prestigious trousseau of the Picentese Queen of Numana, unique objects evocative of the virtues and power she wielded during her life, including in particular two chariots of different types, a chariot and a gig. For a funeral rite typical of the Picentese community of Numana, the two chariots, as in other cases found in central Adriatic Italy, were disassembled and appropriately placed in the burial pit. The Antiquarium houses the recovered and restored metal elements of the two chariots, maintaining the same ratios and measures as when they were laid down. The sumptuous funerary objects of the Picenian Queen include Attic pottery, bronze, ivory and amber jewellery and artefacts. Alongside this extraordinary context, the conspicuous trousseau of a Picenian warrior provides an appropriate counterpart to the female deposition.
The presence of these precious artefacts is further confirmation of the extraordinary importance of this royal burial ground and makes it possible to make some interesting considerations on the trade, relations and exchanges which the port of Numana entertained with Greece and the other ports of the northern Adriatic. The prosperity and wealth attested by the rich tombs found in its necropolis are a reflection of the important role played by the Picentes. Large quantities of material from Numana which ended up in museums and collections both in Italy and abroad (Attic craters and the top of an Etruscan candelabrum in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, a pectoral in Paris and the handle of a hydria in Munich) confirm Numana's importance in the protohistoric age.
Address: via la Fenice, 4
Numana historic centre
Tel. 0719331162
http://www.musei.marche.beniculturali.it/
Opening hours
Tuesdays - Saturdays 8.30am - 7.45pm
Sundays: 02.30pm - 7.45pm
First Sunday of the month and midweek holidays: 8.30am - 7.45pm
Mondays CLOSED
ntiquarium Virtual Tour
