National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia — Attraction in Rome

I looked forward to visiting this museum, and although I appreciated learning more about the Etruscans, I found the experience slightly disappointing and left with the suspicion that the Italian state doesn't really care that much about them, compared to the Romans and Greeks.

In this humble museum, you will find a wealth of information on the Etruscans, but you definitely need to know at least a little bit about them before diving in. The itinerary doesn't make much sense and is very taxing on the visitor to do in one go (there are 40 rooms spread over two levels) while the lack of regular contextualising information makes the exhibits difficult to appreciate.

You start with the Etruscan tombs, which occupy most of the first level, and you will see many Greek pottery and bronzes, as well as colourful frescoes from an Etruscan tomb. At the end of this floor, you reach the temples, where you finally get some contextual information on Etruscan history and religion in the form of a series of four videos. If you have tried to admire everything up to this point, you will have easily spent an hour here already.

Then you go upstairs where you can admire writing and bronzes, which are all very fascinating. Many of these could be classed as masterpieces, but are somehow absent from the general conversation about archaeology. Then you reach a huge hall of Greek pottery and more bronzes which contains no contextualising information whatsoever, which makes me think that these are items that couldn't find a home in the previous exhibits. Here there is also a side room to a temporary exhibit, as well as one on Etruscan jewellery and (unexpectedly) some modern Etruscan-inspired pieces. Another hour perhaps, if you have been reading everything so far.

Coming out of the hall - seemingly out of nowhere - you get introduced to the Faliscans, a sibling group to the Latins who coexisted with the Romans and the Etruscans. At this point (the third hour), the visitor is simply too fatigued to be interested in learning about them. Their material culture doesn't seem to be so different though - the main point of fatigue is in the way the information is presented.

The end of the general exhibit is back on the ground floor, and is dedicated to more Etruscan tombs and temples, more or less a continuation of the beginning exhibits. I get the sense that the ground floor could have been one whole exhibit, with an optional pause for the visitor to visit the garden before tackling the upper floor.

In the end, the museum would massively benefit from a modern curatorial overhaul to elevate the visitor experience. It is a huge intellectual undertaking for anyone not interested or knowledgeable on the subject matter already, and there is no other museum in the same position to promote Etruscan archaeology to the wider (global) public.

The exhibits themselves are fairly well maintained, but the 2000+ year old bronze stands on the second floor visibly shook when met with vibrations, which can't be good for them. Perhaps vibration-proofing cases similar to the one used to the sarcophagus should be considered.

Finally, attendants within the museum were almost nowhere to be seen, and the ones I did see near the beginning of the exhibit were very busy conversing with each other. Out of 40 rooms, I perhaps counted only 4 or 5 attendants, in addition to some workmen.

Hopefully, the next time I return to Rome, some of the improvements I mentioned will have been considered and perhaps...

Today this museum, housed in the handsome Renaissance Villa Giulia, built by Pope Julius III between 1550 and 1555, is the best place in Italy to familiarize with the Etruscans, thanks to a cache of precious artifacts, sculptures, vases, monuments, tools, weapons, and jewels. Fans of ancient history could spend several hours here, but for those with less time, here’s a quick list of the unmissable sights. The most striking attraction is the stunning Sarcofago degli Sposi (Sarcophagus of the Spouses) ★★, a late-6th-century b.c. terra-cotta funerary monument featuring a life-size bride and groom, supposedly lounging at a banquet in the afterlife—there’s a similar monument in the Louvre, Paris. Equally fascinating are the Pyrgi Tablets, gold-leaf inscriptions in both Etruscan and Phoenician from the 5th century b.c., and the Apollo of Veii, a huge painted terra-cotta statue of Apollo dating to the 6th century b.c. The Euphronios Krater is also conserved here, a renowned and perfectly maintained red-figured Greek vase from the 6th century b.c. which returned to Italy from the New York Met after a long legal battle won in 2006. However the structure still stands to this day as a fascinating tourist attraction & above all, its one of the most historical milestone Rome...

Yesterday it was the first time that a visit to this wonderful museum disappointed me: I was disappointed because the gold jewels that you see advertized in the poster outside of the Museum are not on display anymore for security reasons. I was lucky enough that I could see them ten years ago and I still remember them as the most astonishing gold objects I ever saw. I wanted to admire again the famous Euphronios Krater and Kylix illustrating the Trojan War, ( the ones that were returned to Italy from the MET in New York who had paid one million dollar for it, and from the Paul Getty Museum) but they have been transferred to the archeological museum in Cerveteri whom we did not even know that exhisted. Finally, but this is unfortunately a must and I agree with the decision of the Museum, the most famous masterpiece of the Museum , the clay sculpture of the spouses, is under glass as it should be. But I still remember that emotional response that was so direct with the viewer without any glass interference. Unfortunately Museums need to change and not always to the visitors...