The museum, established in 1932 at Palazzo Conti Gentili, and reopened to the public in 1996, now resides in the suggestive Palazzo Gottifredo, built in the XIII century at the behest of Cardinal Gottifredo Raynaldi in the heart of the old town center. The facility, born from the merger of two medieval buildings facing each other, preserves on the ground floors, rooms once used as stables and warehouses, now renovated and intended to house the museum’s exhibition itinerary.
The itinerary, spread out on five different levels and accessible even to people with limited mobility, is organized in 10 rooms and begins at the ground floor, with a section dedicated to the viaggiatori di scoperta (travelers of discovery), with tales of expeditions to the cyclopic walls of the ancient Acropolis during the nineteenth century.

The first floor, with its section dedicated to the ancient Aletrium, offers Roman inscriptions of great importance, among which stands out the epigraph of Lucio Betilieno Varo, a censor who supported important development work between the II and I century BC.
On the mezzanine floor visitors can admire the evocative section dedicated to the Etruscan-Italian Tempietto (small temple), made up of authentic findings, previously displayed at the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome, placed alongside a 1:10 scale model of the temple and a video showing the phases of its discovery in 1882.

On the third floor, visitors can admire a demo-ethno-anthropological section on ancient professions and local rural life. The exhibition, which offers approximately 300 handcrafted farming tools and instruments, documents, in great detail, the rural tradition of southern Lazio.
Nowadays the museum promises visitors a real journey through time to discover the area, from proto-history to medieval and modern life, passing through its rural culture, thanks to the use of modern exhibition technologies such as podcasts and immersive videos.

Campagna fotografica realizzata nell’ambito del progetto “Oltre Roma” e finanziata dalla Regione Lazio, Avviso Pubblico “La cultura fa sistema 2021”