Museo Archeologico Provinciale

Salerno


The province’s restored and revitalised main archaeological museum is an excellent showcase for the excavated history of the surrounding area, dating back to cave dwellers and the colonising Greeks. The pièce de résistance is the 1st-century BC Testa bronzea di Apollo (bronze head of Apollo). Showcased in its own small room upstairs, the head is thought to have been part of a larger statue; it was found by a fisherman in the Gulf of Salerno in 1930.

The upper floor also houses centuries' worth of findings from the nearby necropolis of Fratte (dating from the 6th century BC), including a little vase engraved with salacious gossip describing gay and straight relations between the Greek, Roman and indigenous populations.