The National Archaeological Museum is housed in Palazzo Barberini (Barberini Palace built in the Renaissance) that stands on the site of the ancient sanctuary of the Fortuna Primigenia.

In the rooms of the Museum, over three floors of the building, the most important archaeological finds from the ancient Praeneste and the surrounding territory are on exhibition, divided into different themes that encompass the main aspects of history, culture and artistic works of one of the most important and flourishing cities of ancient Lazio.

The rooms of the first floor house works related to the cult of Fortuna - the head of the cult statue of the goddess, discovered in the Sanctuary inside the so-called well of the sortes, and the colossal statue of Isis-Fortuna, the original Hellenistic in lapis niger from Rhodes, Roman copies of Greek masterpieces, honorary statues, portraits and reliefs of the republican and imperial age. From the Augustan Age, there is one of the famous Grimani reliefs, an impressive artistic work about the Augustan political programme of peace and moral rebirth, which may have been the work of the same sculptors who decorated the Ara Pacis in Rome. We also find on the first floor the famous sculptural group of the Triade Capitolina di Guidonia: the only sculptural representation of this subject that remains today and which was discovered only recently.

On the second floor there are objects discovered in the necropolises, including bronze cists and mirrors adorned by elegant engravings depicting rare versions of ancient Greek and Italic myths, and numerous votive and architectural terracotta objects from the sanctuaries of the city.

There is only one room on the third floor and it houses the spectacular polychrome mosaic of the Nile, a perspective view of the Egyptian landscape during the flooding of the Nile made by Alexandrine artists at the end of the II century B.C.. It is one of the biggest and most important Hellenistic mosaics conserved today, an absolute masterpiece for its composition, chromatic taste and wealth of detail.

Galleria fotografica