Ancient Italic peoples: the Ernicians, Volscians and others

From Saturday, Dec. 23, 2023 in Veroli (FR) the exhibition Ancient Italic Peoples: the Ernici, the Volsci and the Others is open to the public, set up in the nine rooms on the ground floor of the Palazzo Marchesi Campanari, a splendid 18th-century residence of an important family of the Veroli aristocracy.

More than 300 pieces recount various aspects of the life of the Italic peoples who inhabited the territory between the Ernici Mountains, the valleys of the Sacco and Liri rivers, and the Pontine plain, now falling within the provinces of Frosinone and Latina.

The narrative of this mosaic of cultures spans more than four centuries prior to the Roman conquest and is entrusted to the display of largely unpublished excavation contexts that have come to light in recent decades from the territories of Anagni, Frosinone, Pofi, and Latina and until now stored in museum deposits.

The exhibit ranges from the rich trove of a late seventh-century B.C.E. child burial from Anagni, to finds from fifth- and fourth-century B.C.E. burials from Piazzale de Matthaeis in Frosinone, Pa; from the grave goods of the wooden-box pit tombs of the Fortore Derupata necropolis in Pofi, found as part of preventive archaeological investigations, to those of the pre-Roman village of Via Landolfi in Frosinone, where burials flank housing structures, to a selection of finds from the necropolis of Poggio dei Cavalieri di Satricum (Borgo le Ferriere - Latina), funerary contexts accumulated by the presence of the typical "Latium" amphorae in brown impasto.

A section of the exhibition is dedicated to the display of materials recovered in the United States thanks to the action carried out by the Carabinieri of the Nucleo Tutela Patrimonio Culturale between 2021 and 2022: objects of extraordinary beauty, deprived of the context of origin, but found in all probability in the Etruscan or Lazio area, where, between 600 and 450 B.C., these products were imported from Greece for their artistic value.

The exhibition is the first stage in a project to enhance Palazzo Marchesi Campanari that, through a virtuous synergy between the Ministry of Culture, the Lazio Region and the Municipality of Veroli, aims to create a national archaeological museum.