Organized in several locations around the historic town center, the Scattered Museum takes visitors on an itinerary that weaves together archeological finds, epigraphs, architecture and landscapes, reestablishing Lanuvium’s ancient identity and its transformation into the medieval town of Civita Lavinia. In Villa Sforza Cesarini’s park, a liberty-style villa from the early 1900s, stand the historical remains of Giunone Sospita’s sanctuary, the main place of worship of the goddess Juno and one of the most relevant temples in ancient Lazio.

The path continues with the Sala della Stipe di Pantanacci, a room that hosts a recreation of the Sacred snake cave, tied to an ancient propitiatory ritual: young blindfolded virgins offered flat bread to a giant reptile, symbol of fertility. The remains of the serpent’s statue, three cylindrical peperino blocks carved to resemble a snake’s scales, are displayed in the room along with hundreds of votive offerings made up of crockery and anatomical votives. Among these votives are the never-before-seen oral cavities, unique in the national landscape.

The itinerary continues with the Medieval tower, testament of the castle founded by Benedictine monks during the X century. Used in modern times as a jail, the Tower preserves its narrow prison cell where, according to tradition, the writer Stendhal was imprisoned.
The Sixteenth-century dungeon in Palazzo Colonna houses one of the most important sculptural groups of the Hellenistic era: the Donario di Licinio Murena. A group of equestrian statues in Parian marble from the first half of the I century BC, rediscovered in Giunone Sospita’s sanctuary. In the same underground space, visitors can also see the Museo della Barberia (Barbershop Museum). To conclude the itinerary, near Piazza della Maddalena, the main town’s square, visitors can admire inscriptions of names, professions and faces of imperial Lanuvium.

The museum’s collection preserves important pieces like the latin alphabet engraved under a bucchero cup – one of the oldest testimonies of latin writing – and fragments of frescos depicting Dionysian scenes, a prime example of refined roman wall-paintings.

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