Description
The Antonio Salinas Regional Archaeological Museum is Palermo's great archaeological museum: it tells the story of Sicily from prehistory to the Middle Ages, with Phoenicians, Punics, Greeks, Romans and Byzantines, and even a few guests from far away, such as the Egyptians and the Etruscans. It is housed in a former Philippine convent.
The most famous piece is the Palermo Stone, a fragment of a black diorite stele. It is the oldest known royal annal of pharaonic Egypt: it lists the rulers of the first five dynasties and records, year by year, the height reached by the Nile floods.
The Greek heart of the museum is Selinunte. The temple metopes show mythological reliefs in stone, archaic and classical sculptures; there is also the Selinunte Tablet, which celebrates the wealth of the city. The first metopes came to light in 1823, when two English architects, Samuel Angell and William Harris, discovered Temple C.
In the agora, the courtyard covered with glass and steel, the seventeen lion-head spouts of the temple of Himera, from 480 BC, are on display, one still with traces of its original color. Next to them is the great Gorgon, reassembled from the drawings of 1926: it is the largest gorgoneion in Greek architecture.
Among the rooms, the Bronze Ram stands out, from the 3rd century BC, which came from Syracuse: crouching, it looks ready to spring. There are also the large Phoenician anthropoid sarcophagi, the Roman mosaics detached from the villas of Piazza Vittoria and, for prehistory, finds from the caves around Palermo.
The Etruscan collection comes from Chiusi, from the excavations of Count Bonci Casuccini, and is considered the most important outside Tuscany. Sarcophagi, urns, bronzes and grave goods fill whole rooms.
The museum was born in 1814 as the university's museum. In 1866, with the confiscation of church property, it moved into the convent of the Philippine fathers, and from 1873 to 1914 it was directed by Antonino Salinas, archaeologist and numismatist: he filled it with finds and, when he died, left the museum his collection of 6,641 pieces.
Don't miss
• The Palermo Stone.
• The metopes of Selinunte.
• The Bronze Ram.
• The agora with the Himera spouts.
Did you know?
• The names of the pharaohs' mothers, which no other source records, are also carved on the Palermo Stone.
• The museum held a fragment of the Parthenon frieze, the foot of Artemis, returned to Greece in 2022.
• In the convent a 17th-century Philippine chapel remains, with stucco, wood, gold and ivory.
The most famous piece is the Palermo Stone, a fragment of a black diorite stele. It is the oldest known royal annal of pharaonic Egypt: it lists the rulers of the first five dynasties and records, year by year, the height reached by the Nile floods.
The Greek heart of the museum is Selinunte. The temple metopes show mythological reliefs in stone, archaic and classical sculptures; there is also the Selinunte Tablet, which celebrates the wealth of the city. The first metopes came to light in 1823, when two English architects, Samuel Angell and William Harris, discovered Temple C.
In the agora, the courtyard covered with glass and steel, the seventeen lion-head spouts of the temple of Himera, from 480 BC, are on display, one still with traces of its original color. Next to them is the great Gorgon, reassembled from the drawings of 1926: it is the largest gorgoneion in Greek architecture.
Among the rooms, the Bronze Ram stands out, from the 3rd century BC, which came from Syracuse: crouching, it looks ready to spring. There are also the large Phoenician anthropoid sarcophagi, the Roman mosaics detached from the villas of Piazza Vittoria and, for prehistory, finds from the caves around Palermo.
The Etruscan collection comes from Chiusi, from the excavations of Count Bonci Casuccini, and is considered the most important outside Tuscany. Sarcophagi, urns, bronzes and grave goods fill whole rooms.
The museum was born in 1814 as the university's museum. In 1866, with the confiscation of church property, it moved into the convent of the Philippine fathers, and from 1873 to 1914 it was directed by Antonino Salinas, archaeologist and numismatist: he filled it with finds and, when he died, left the museum his collection of 6,641 pieces.
Don't miss
• The Palermo Stone.
• The metopes of Selinunte.
• The Bronze Ram.
• The agora with the Himera spouts.
Did you know?
• The names of the pharaohs' mothers, which no other source records, are also carved on the Palermo Stone.
• The museum held a fragment of the Parthenon frieze, the foot of Artemis, returned to Greece in 2022.
• In the convent a 17th-century Philippine chapel remains, with stucco, wood, gold and ivory.