The Museum is really a masterpiece. It is situated along the via Ostiense – the way from Rome to Ostia, the ancient Roman port city – in a dismissed electric plant, away from the normal touristic circuit. A place for connoisseurs!
The combination of the modern engines of the plant and the classic ancient statues and Roman artworks is amazing.
Particularly remarkable is the collection of artifacts of the Republican period but, in general, many items of the Museum are worth noting.
Just few examples:
- the grave of Crepereia Tryphaena (150-160 A.D.) where, near the girl’s body, was also found her little ivory doll (a “Barbie doll” ante litteram);
- the funerary altar of Q. Sulpicius Maximus a young Roman poet who died when he was just eleven years old (the monument was found in Rome during the demolition of Porta Salaria in 1921);
- a large mosaic representing hunting scenes and several beautiful statues (among them the two famous statues of magistratus) found near the nymphaeum (the wrongly so-called temple of Minerva Medica near the present Stazione Termini) in the ancient Horti Liciniani (the gardens of the Emperor Licinius Gallienus);
- the sculpture of Marsia carved out from a red marble bloc (Marsia was the Faunus that defied Apollo at playing the flute and was punished by the God by being tortured to death);
- several findings of the so-called Temple of Apollo Sosianus (from the name of the consul Caius Sosius, 32 B.C., who probably rebuilt the Temple located near the Theatre of Marcellus);
- findings of a colossal statue of the goddess Fortuna Huiusce Diei etc..
Among the modern objects presented in the Museum, it is worth mentioning the train coaches of the Pope Pius IX (Chief of the Catholic Church between 1846 and 1878 and last Pope to rule the city of Rome until its annexing to the Kingdom of Italy in 1870).
m.v.
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