Luogo - Museum
MUSEO CIVICO AUFIDENATE
Where
CONTRADA DELLA MADDALENA, SNC, Castel di Sangro (L'Aquila)
Aufidena's Municipal Museum is set inside the Franciscan St. Mary Magdalene's Convent, on the outskirts of Castel di Sangro. The building, founded at the end of the fifteenth century over the site of a lodging for travelers and pilgrims, lay on Via degli Abruzzi, the main trade-route of the region.
The former nucleus of the museum, inaugurated in 1898, comprised three hundred and thirty-five archaeological finds and one hundred and thirty coins. It takes its name from a dispute risen among the archaeologists about the identification of the earlier settlement of Castel di Sangro. A few of them suggested that it should be recognized in the Roman municipium of Aufidena, thus the antiquarium was called Aufidena's Municipal Museum.
At the beginning of the twelfth century the convent went through a gradual decay; in addition, the collection got lost in the course of the Second World War, except for the lapidarium and a few relics.
At present the museum is divided in three sections: the prehistoric section is set on the ground-floor, the Roman and the Medieval and modern ones on the first-floor. The prehistoric section puts on display important evidences of the human presence in the high Sangro Valley: fossils and finds of the Paleolithic, statues of the Iron Age and pottery of Oscan production.
The Roman section includes epigraphs and funeral arrays, which previously were part of the Antiquarium, votive earthenware and ceramic fragments, which testify a rich pottery production in Castel di Sangro.
The Museum contains also botanical gardens, a Nativity of Neapolitan production and the international museum of fishing with baits of Kuckiewicz.
