Museum of Archeology of the University of Pavia

History

In 1818 Pier Vittorio Aldini participated in the competition for the first chair of Archeology at the University of Pavia, the oldest in Italy, won the post the following year he took up service. The Museum of Archeology of the University of Pavia was born with the name of "Numismatic and antiquarian cabinet" on the initiative of Pier Vittorio Aldini, as an integral part of the Institute of Archeology founded in 1819, one of the oldest, together with that of Padua, in Italy. The predominantly didactic purpose of the collection, initially fueled by a prudent purchasing policy and conceived as a field of practical exercises in archeology and classical art history, gives the reason for its non-specialist character, but articulated on a great variety of materials, distributed over a very extended chronological span (from the 2nd millennium BC to late antiquity).

The series of marble sculptures largely dates back to Aldini's acquisitions, including the most valuable piece in the collection, the splendid female head, a Roman replica of the Aphrodite Sosadra of Calamis. Also in the same collection a group of Roman marble statues from Velleia was enriched. Of remarkable quality is a private female portrait of the imperial age assigned to the second half of the 2nd century AD. Interesting for the history of the circulation of forgeries in the antiquarian trade is the presence of some pieces of modern execution, including an eighteenth-century copy of a portrait in the National Museum of Naples, long considered to be a Hellenistic original. …

Description

The museum is divided into several collections:

The numismatic heritage has about 8,000 pieces divided between Greek, Roman republican and imperial, Celtic, late antique and Byzantine coins. The collection of carvings (scarabs, gems, engraved glass paste and cameos) and digital rings includes a total of 66 specimens of unknown provenance. However, a first nucleus was acquired by the founder of the Museum, Pier Vittorio Aldini, while others arrived through donations, we remember in particular that of the rector Arcangelo Spedalieri (1779-1823) who wanted to leave his small (29 gold coins, 300 silver and only 76 bronze) but rich collection of Greek, Roman, Byzantine, medieval and modern coins, almost all of Sicilian origin. The eighteenth-century numismatic collecting in Pavia is well represented by the collection of coins formed throughout the eighteenth century by three generations of representatives of the Bellisomi family and finally donated to the University in 1821, it consists mainly of Roman coins, both republican and imperial. Again through donations, the collection of Marquis Stefano Bernardo Majnoni, a native of Intignano and probably the most active and cultured collector of the first half of the nineteenth century in Lombardy, also enriched the museum's assets. In particular, Majnoni studied and collected Kufic, Sassanid coins and coins from the Greek mints of the East and left to the university a nucleus of archaic coins from Sybaris, from the Greek cities of Asia and provincial Romans.

These are finds from various Lombard settlements: stone and bone tools, chipped and polished flints, scraper blades, arrowheads. The protohistoric pottery is of coarse dough and worked by hand. Also conserved are a spearhead and bronze fibulae, bracelets and rings, some decorated with globes. These finds represent the substratum of indigenous cultures of northern Italy, then subjected to the Romanization process. …