The museum is located within the Municipal Building of Velletri and offers two itineraries: the archaeological itinerary and the Geo-palaeontology and Prehistory of the Colli Albani itinerary.
Archaeological Itinerary

The museum exhibits all archaeological works from the territory of Velletri and the surrounding area. The show piece of the collection is without a doubt the Sarcophagus of the Labours of Hercules, also known in international archaeological literature as the Sarcophagus of Velletri.

The collection mainly includes gravestone materials (tombstones, sculptures, funeral urns and epigraphs) and clay materials (architectural tablets, votives and domestic tools) that range from the prehistoric period through to the late Middle Ages.

Among the most important works, other than the aforementioned Roman sarcophagus, the following are worthy of particular note: the Burial Slab of the Orant, a Christian burial slab from the 4th Century A.D. with scenes from the Old and New Testament, and the so-called Volscian Terracottas, clay facing slabs discovered in 1910 in the area of the Sacred Church of the Holy Stigmata.
The new Geo-palaeontology and Prehistory of the Colli Albani itinerary

The new route is divided into five sections: Geology, Palaeontology, Anthropology, Prehistory and Protohistory. In over five hundred square metres, it maps the birth, evolution and population of the Colli Albani territory.

The visit is set up to be a thrilling immersion into the most remote part of this area, from its origins (hundreds of millions of years ago) to the Iron Age (9th-7th Century B.C.).

The exhibition, designed to be interactive, explains large-scale phenomena that happened over extremely long periods of time using paleontological materials and important collections from the Department of Archaeology for the Lazio region, with a rich array of didactic tools and the aid of reproductions, moulds, videos and plastic models, such as the great volcano of the Geology Room.

The areas themselves have suggested ingenious display solutions, with scenographic settings that aim to involve the visitor’s emotions and senses. Therefore, the long corridor at the beginning of the itinerary gave rise to the idea and creation of a “fire duct” with suggestions, sounds and three-dimensional images of an eruption that, from the bowels of the volcano, thrusts the visitor into eras far from the first exhibition rooms.

Since volcanic activity has deeply affected the landscape of the Colli Albani area, the “journey” begins precisely with the world of volcanoes, even though the history of this region begins hundreds of millions of years earlier, as explained during subsequent exhibition settings.
Kids’ Itinerary

The sections boast a special and innovative didactic tool alongside the usual information panels in English and Italian; a solution that makes communicative skills a strength of this museum. The “Kid’s’ Itinerary” is a route especially designed for young children to read. It is placed at child height where overhanging panels are explained by the Lazio Volcano using eye-catching graphics.

Galleria fotografica