The Archaeological Museum is the oldest in Abruzzo, founded in 1849 as the Municipal Archaeological Cabinet of Vasto, by the local doctor and historian, Luigi Marchesani. His intent was to collect the finds made available by some historic families of the city, together with those that he himself collected and catalogued, on the occasion of discoveries in the areas surrounding the town centre.
Initially housed in the town hall, currently the Bishop’s Palace, in the street of the same name, the Museum was moved in 1859 to the palace of the royal subprefecture, the former convent of San Francesco, adjacent to the church of Sant’Antonio. There, it was enlarged and rearranged by another writer and historian from Vasto, Luigi Anelli.
The current archaeological museum, and a good part of the cultural identity of Vasto, are the result of the work of these two characters, to whom we also owe the two compendiums of city history, on which subsequent generations were educated.
With the landslide of 1956, the same one that would lead to the discovery of the Roman baths beneath the Franciscan convent twenty years later, the museum was closed. It was reopened only in the Seventies, on the ground floor of Palazzo d’Avalos, in the rooms that had originally housed the Marquis theater, and had subsequently been converted into a cinema screening room.
With the exhibition of the first large mosaic found in the Roman baths, the so-called Marino Mosaic, the museum grew in importance, but a new threat of landslide on the eastern ridge of Vasto led to its closure again in the 1990s. In 1998, the museum was reopened in its current form, without the mosaic of the Baths, which was returned to its original site.
Today the Archaeological Museum is divided into five rooms, which respect the chronological order of the exhibits on display.
In the first room, dedicated to the Frentano period, we find finds dating from the ninth to the third century BC. On display are funerary objects from the necropolises of Tratturo and Villalfonsina, votive terracottas from the sanctuaries of Villalfonsina and Punta Penna, a collection of bronzes, and a collection of numismatics. Epigraphs from the Punta Penna site are also on display. They are written in the Oscan language, the pre-Roman language spoken by the Frentani and other populations in southern Italy.
The second room is dedicated to the development of the city of Histonium in the first imperial age, that is, in the first century BC. Sarcophagi, amphorae and portraits of the Julio-Claudian gens are on display, the lineage that gave Rome emperors from Octavian Augustus to Nero.
The third room concerns the expansion of Histonium in the full imperial age, that is to say the first and second centuries AD. Finds from the amphitheater, aqueducts, cisterns and baths are preserved. Also on display are stamped bricks, oil lamps, and an excellently crafted bust, probably a portrait of Ulpia Marciana, sister of Emperor Trajan.
In the fourth room, the altar stones and funerary objects are preserved, coming from the most important city necropolises, located in the area of the current Piazza Barbacani, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Vasto Marina and Incoronata.
In the last room, there are finds from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Of historical importance is an epigraph that testifies to the restoration of the city Capitol, completed in 357 AD, after the disastrous Sannio earthquake of 346. Also on display are Byzantine coins, and the cusp of a tabernacle, coming from a church in Vasto in eighth century.
From the archaeological museum, there is finally access to the Neapolitan garden of Palazzo d’Avalos. Near the southern wall of the palace, other minor archaeological finds are exposed, such as tombstones, columns, and parts of statues.
