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Verucchio on Italian Protohistorical Age |
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Verucchio on Italian Protohistorical Age
Although Verucchio boasts an ancient history that is inseparably linked to the Malatesta dynasty, its roots strech back far beyond the Middle Ages. In the Iron Age, between the 9th and 6th centuries BC, it was the home of an important settlement of the Villanovan culture, and extraordinary artefacts left by these inhabitants of long-ago are displayed in the Civic Museum. The Civic Archeological Museum is located inside a former Augustinian monastery founded in the 8th century, enlarged in 1646 and restored in 1980. The museum itself was opened in 1985, and has many unique exhibits, including artefacts made with organic materials that have been conserved by the special characteristics of the rock in which Villanovans cut their tombs. The first archeological discoveries at Verucchio date back to the 17th century, but the most systematic excavations were made between 1960 and 1975, revealing the existence of hundreds of burial sites attributable to the period between the 9th and the 7th centuries BC. In addition to the funerary urns containing the ashes of the cremated bodies, the tombs have yielded the remains of fabrics, weapons, weaving implements, ornaments and buckles in gold and gleaming amber, many pottery and bronze objects buried as offerings in the tombs, and elaborate wooden artefacts, including an exceptional wooden throne decorated with human figures. The tombs of Verucchio have brought riches to light that are of no lesser importance than those of the Etruscans elsewhere in Italy.
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