Museo Irpino

Corso Europa

About

Across from the public park of Villa Comunale, this modern museum houses an important collection of fascinating artifacts dating as far back as 4000 B.C. The extensive archaeological collection is in the main building, together with the grandiose 18th-century artistic presepio and a rich collection of porcelain from the late-18th to the early-19th century. The picture gallery, with an ensemble of 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century Neapolitan masters, has been moved to the Carcere Borbonico (Piazza d'Armi, off Via Mancini, same hours as the museum), an interesting hexagonal building that once housed the prisons of the Bourbon kings. In rooms no. II and III are the artifacts excavated from the aeneolithic necropolis of Madonna delle Grazie (near Mirabella Eclano), including the reconstruction of a complete tomb of a tribal chief, buried with his dog. (By the way, "aeneolithic" means the transitional period between the neolithic and the Bronze Age; we looked it up.) A number of findings document life in the old Abellinum, including a great mosaic from the 1st century (in the entrance hall), ceramics, fragments of frescoes, and the funerary collection from the 2nd-century tomb of a young woman, all in rooms no. VIII and IX. A new hall displays the recent findings from the Sanctuary of the Goddess Mefite, a cult going back to the 6th century B.C. that persisted through the Roman era. These were found in a site near the Passo di Mirabella.