Museo Archeologico Gaio Cilnio Mecenate e Anfiteatro Romano

Arezzo, the city of Maecenas and coral vases

The National Archaeological Museum in Arezzo, named after Maecenas, holds one of the most important archaeological collections in Tuscany and, together with the Roman Amphitheatre, tells the ancient history of this city.
The museum is housed in the rooms of the former monastery of San Bernardo, a building with an unusual curvilinear shape, as it was built in the 14th century on the remains of the amphitheatre of Arretium.
The route winds its way through 26 rooms on two floors: on the ground floor we find exhibits tracing Arezzo’s history from its Etruscan origins to the late antique age, while on the upper floor we find the prehistoric section, themed rooms dedicated to ceramics, glass and precious objects, bronzes and numismatics, and others referring to the collections of illustrious Arezzo citizens, such as the Bacci family and the famous archaeologist Gian Francesco Gamurrini.
Among the most significant works in the Etruscan section are the jewellery from the urban necropolis of Poggio del Sole, the painted terracotta that decorated the city’s temples and the findings from the imposing extra-urban sanctuary of Castelsecco.
The Roman section houses the world’s richest collection of terra sigillata vases, which the ancients called Arretina vasa, popularly known as ‘coral vases’ because of their coral red colour: these are tableware vases produced in Arezzo between the mid-first century B.C. and the mid-first century A.D. that made the city famous throughout the Roman Empire and beyond.
Other museum highlights include a very important Greek crater painted by the famous Attic ceramographer Euphronios, depicting the battle between Hercules and the Amazons, and a Roman medallion with a male portrait in chrysography (graffito on gold and silver foil enclosed by glass plates) dating from the second half of the 3rd century AD, which is one of the finest examples of this technique.