ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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The regional archaeological museum Paolo Orsi of Syracuse is one of the main archaeological museums in Europe.

History

The old museum
In 1780 Bishop Alagona inaugurated the Museum of the Seminary in 1808, Civic Museum at the Archvescovado. Subsequently a royal decree of 17 June 1878 sanctioned the birth of the National Archaeological Museum of Syracuse, inaugurated only in 1886 in its historic headquarters in Piazza Duomo.

From 1895 to 1934 Paolo Orsi directed the Museum and excavation campaigns along the eastern territory of Sicily.

In 1941, during the Second World War, due to the bombings, Superintendent Bernabò Brea ordered the finds to be loaded back of mule and hidden at the tunnels of Eurialo Castle.

After the war, a reorganization of prehistoric and Greek collections took place. However, as a result of the remarkable findings during the various excavation campaigns, the spaces of the old museum were no longer sufficient to decree the need to create a new exhibition space at the present location in the garden of Villa Landolina. In 1977, with the expertise of cultural heritage, the State passed to the Sicilian Region, the national museum became regional.

The new structure
The new museum space, entrusted to the architect Franco Minissi who applied modern architectural criteria of musealization. The museum was inaugurated in January 1988 at the Villa Landolina on two exhibition floors of 9,000 m2, of which initially only one of the floors was opened to the public, and a basement of 3,000 m2, where an auditorium and offices are located.

The shape of the museum structure rotates around a central body used as a conference room at the basement and exhibition hall on the ground floor. The lighting of the rooms is obtained by letting the sunlight filter directly from the roof and the lateral spaces. The exhibition was curated by the architect Franco Minissi. with the coordination of the archaeologist Giuseppe Voza.

In 2006 the exhibition of the upper floor dedicated to Hellenistic Syracuse was inaugurated.

In 2014 a further extension to the upper floor allows the vision of the Sarcofago of Adelfia and other findings related to the catacombs of Syracuse and the Early Christian Syracuse.

In 2015 he became the first Sicilian museum (and the first archaeological museum from Rome down) to allow the vision of his rooms through Google Street View. Moreover, thanks to a pilot project, for the first time you can make virtual tours of some archaeological finds, by clicking directly on interactive maps or points of interest in the windows, deepening the description with appropriate descriptive cards, directly navigating inside the museum in Street View mode: in this way the virtual tour has been "increased" thanks to specific software. At the end of 2015 the museum, besides registering a significant increase of visitors is