Museo lapidario estense

Located in the portico on the ground floor of the eighteenth-century Hotel of the Arts, now the Palace Museum, the Museum of Lapidary Estense, was established in 1828 by Francesco IV of Austria-Este. Here were gathered the testimonies of epigraphic and historical-artistic interest of the city and the ducal territory to be the first city museum with educational intent and use. For this purpose, works from the collections of Este catalyzed other donations and acquisitions. The most important nucleus of Lapidary Estense is represented by the impressive sarcophagi of Roman imperial age, transferred from the courtyard of Canonical's Cathedral, where they lay by the end of the seventeenth century, and which are still the most conspicuous series of artifacts of this kind of the whole Emilia Romagna. The important Roman section alongside seamless monuments of medieval and Renaissance section documenting the reuse of ancient sarcophagi and subsequent shooting and imitations. This section documents the leading Modena also belonging to the illustrious history closest to us.