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Museo Archeologico e d'Arte della Maremma

Museo Archeologico e d'Arte della Maremma
Photo by Luis Quintero on Pexels
Museo Archeologico e d'Arte della Maremma
Photo by Valentin Ivantsov on Pexels
Museo Archeologico e d'Arte della Maremma
Photo by Marcel Gierschick on Pexels
Museo Archeologico e d'Arte della Maremma
Photo by Helena Jankovičová Kováčová on Pexels
Museo Archeologico e d'Arte della Maremma
Photo by Federico Abis on Pexels
Museo Archeologico e d'Arte della Maremma
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels

On the third floor of a mid-19th-century former courthouse on Piazza Baccarini, a 13th-century panel painting attributed to Guido da Siena hangs a short walk from an Etruscan bowl scratched with a Greek alphabet that is 2,600 years old. That proximity — sacred art and pre-Roman archaeology sharing the same building — is what makes this museum worth the five euros.

The collections move through the deep history of the Maremma: Etruscan funerary urns from Volterra and Chiusi, an Euboean krater dated to 730 BC, and the reconstructed hull of an African shipwreck pulled from the seabed near Giglio Porto. Five sections across forty rooms, none of them overwhelming.

💛 What travellers fall for

People who come back tend to linger on the third floor longer than they planned — specifically in front of Sassetta's "Madonna of the Cherries" and the pair of marble angels by G.A. and B. Mazzuoli. Download the Izi.Travel app before you arrive; the audio guide in English works well and costs nothing beyond your entry ticket.

Good to know
Hours shift four times a year, so check the seasonal schedule before you go — winter weekday closing at 15:00 catches people out. Guided tours are included in the entry price but require advance booking; call 0564/488752-760. Full entry is €5.00. Closed Mondays, 25 December, 1 January, and 1 May.

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The story

How Museo Archeologico e d'Arte della Maremma came to be

Canon Giovanni Chelli, born in Siena in 1809, began assembling the collection that would become this museum in 1860, when Grosseto was a town of roughly 4,000 people. It passed into municipal hands in 1865, and in 1955 archaeologist Aldo Mazzolai took over as director of what had by then become an independent civic institution.

The decisive reorganisation came in 1975: the museum relocated to the Palazzo del Vecchio Tribunale, a mid-19th-century building on a medieval footprint, and absorbed the Diocesan Sacred Art Museum that Antonio Cappelli had founded in 1933. After closing in 1992 for a long restoration, it reopened on 21 March 1999 in the form visitors find today.

People & landmarks

Who and what shaped it

People who shaped it

Giovanni Chelli
Canon and founder; began assembling the archaeological collection in 1860 that became the museum's core.
Aldo Mazzolai
Archaeologist and director from 1955; oversaw the museum's establishment as an independent civic institution.
Antonio Cappelli
Founder of the Diocesan Sacred Art Museum in 1933; collection merged with archaeological museum in 1975.

Landmark buildings

Palazzo del Vecchio Tribunale
Mid-19th-century former courthouse on medieval foundations; relocated museum here in 1975, now houses three floors and forty exhibition rooms.
Practical

Plan your visit

On the map

When to go

Right now

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Mon
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Weather data: Open-Meteo

Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.

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