Since last April there has been a new archaeological museum in the city. It is not the sort of news that pierces the fog of indifference, but it deserves some consideration, given that Umbria's cultural offering constitutes, if nothing else, the region's principal tourist draw.
The recent layout marks a definitive break with the previous arrangement, which no longer met current needs or the most up-to-date museographic approaches. Contents, the selection of materials and the thoroughly renewed itinerary aim to offer the visitor the clearest possible picture of Umbria's thousand-year history. The various sections into which the route is organised, marked out by colour codes, allow a constant chronological orientation and the chance to explore certain aspects in depth by consulting interactive tools and more traditional supports (focus) placed along the exhibition areas. The extensive explanatory apparatus makes use of large-format panels with evocative settings, entrusted to the plates of the Inklink studio and of Angelo Barili, a meticulous scientific illustrator.
The new route begins with the prehistoric section, which opens with a series of information on palaeoanthropology intended to outline the complex evolutionary path that led to the appearance of homo sapiens. Settings and drawings take on the task of supporting the display so as to make it easier to understand. Multimedia tools are likewise available, with examples of experimental archaeology (lighting a fire, knapping flint). By querying a touch screen it is also possible to listen to a double interview on human evolution that compares the thinking of an evolutionist of Christian inspiration, the palaeoanthropologist Don Lorenzo Facchini, with the more secular position of Telmo Pievani, an epistemologist of science.
In the large hall on the upper floor, the only space newly fitted out with LED-lit display cases, materials are presented relating to the two peoples who inhabited the territory, largely identifiable with today's regional boundaries.
The two ethnic groups occupied respectively the left bank (the Umbrians) and the right bank (the Etruscans) of the river Tevere, ideally represented in this exhibition space by the wide central nave.
A natural frontier and a resource, the river long fixed the line of demarcation between the two peoples, later absorbed into Roman culture. This waterway, which crosses much of Umbria along its length, was also responsible for a fundamental role of cultural mediation with the populations connected to it. Along its course an intense economy of commercial exchange developed which, around the 6th century BC, favoured the rise of the dominant centres of Perugia and Orvieto.
Assuming, then, a schematic geographical division, to the left of the corridor, entering from the staircase, finds from the Umbrian side are displayed, while the right wing presents evidence from the Etruscan one. The materials, selected according to criteria of representativeness, aim to outline the dominant traits of two cultures, also highlighting the intense dynamics of exchange and contact between neighbouring peoples.
After visiting the Umbrians and Etruscans room, the indicated route leads into the section of the Perugian necropolises. The oldest are attested as early as the 9th-8th century BC. In this context there is a burial that yielded an antenna sword, found at Fontivegge, at the foot of the hill on which the Etruscan city would later rise. This object denotes the presence of a class of warriors who used weapons of a type widespread in central Italy.
The quality of the materials suggests a society already organised into distinct social classes, which in the late Orientalising period established itself as an aristocracy.
A separate section is devoted to the city of Perugia, with a selection of finds spanning a broad period. From finds of the Villanovan age, which indicate a stable settlement system as early as the 9th century BC, one moves on to the Etruscan city and then the Roman one. Materials and drawings help to define the evolution of the city up to late Roman times. These are finds of considerable scientific importance and, in particular, a reconstruction is offered of the ancient settlement as it has come to be understood through the recent excavations carried out beneath the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo and in Piazza Cavallotti. The space devoted to the Roman section includes a series of materials, panels and large-format photographs that offer an overview of the region subjected to the power of Rome. Urban-planning and economic aspects are addressed through the analysis of settlements, productive activities, commercial exchanges and the road network, a fundamental instrument for the Roman penetration of Umbrian territory, with closer studies of the great consular roads and the navigability of watercourses. The final part is devoted instead to the municipia, reread in their evolution from their origins to the late-antique phase, where materials and panels are placed that illustrate the historical development of the centres present in the region.
A considerable effort, in short, sustained by the commitment of the in-house staff, who managed to make up for the shortage of resources. But a certain amount of courage was also needed to overturn the arrangement of Umberto Calzoni, the historic director, who at the San Domenico site succeeded, in 1948, in bringing together the collections of the Musei Civici. An undertaking begun in 1925, studded with unimaginable difficulties and toil. Thanks also to the fruitful research carried out at Cetona, he enriched the museum with extraordinary evidence from the Bronze Age.
Before him it was the turn of Giuseppe Bellucci, chemist, anthropologist and much else besides, as was moreover customary among the positivists. After the death of Mariano Guardabassi he was charged with reordering the museum's disarranged collections. Within a few years he achieved the goal, and in 1910 he published the Guida alle collezioni del museo etrusco-romano di Perugia.
His important private collection also formed, after his death, the first nucleus of the prehistoric section for which the museum would become famous throughout Europe.
To this substantial nucleus also belongs the collection of amulets, now arranged in a specific area, the richest and most coherent collection in the world of therapeutic objects and magico-religious instruments, produced and used within the Italian folkloric belt.
The museum's new display arrangement is accompanied by the guide, a substantial publishing venture that appears exactly a century after Bellucci's.
On 30 December 1957 Professor Alessandro Seppilli, Mayor of Perugia, signed a notarial deed of free transfer for the benefit of the Ministry of Public Education. The document, virtually unknown to all, assigns to the State the ownership of the San Domenico architectural complex and of all the historical and archaeological collections that had belonged to the municipal museums. It is the birth certificate of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale dell'Umbria.
The donation is, however, subject to a series of conditions, first among them that the building be always used as a museum. Not only that. Article four enjoins that "all the materials and collections that make up the municipal museums, and those that will arrive later, must on no account be removed from the Museo Archeologico Nazionale dell'Umbria, save for temporary and brief transfers for reasons of exceptional urgency and of artistic and scientific interest, as, for example, for exhibitions of a National or International character or for restorations impossible to carry out in Perugia, giving, in any case, prior notice to the Comune di Perugia[1]".

The peremptory condition, which binds the State even in the future, certainly reflects Calzoni's centralist stamp, but it also appears sustained by his genuine passion. It should indeed be remembered that the transfer to the state administration, for which the tenacious director had worked ceaselessly in the name of a value he held to be paramount, would also mark the end of his own career as a "municipal employee".
The brief historical preamble helps to outline an attitude on the part of the local administrations, and of the municipality in particular, at that time rather attentive to the safeguarding of cultural heritage. It was indeed a mixed alliance, made up of the Province and the Comune di Perugia, together with the state administration, that purchased the substantial Bellucci collection, saving it from the rapacious antiquarian market.
For some time now things have changed, and cultural property is conceived only in terms of its capacity to generate economic returns. An aspect, mind you, that is not a secondary one, were it not that safeguarding, regarded as a useless obstacle, has by now given way to the din of exhibitions and figures. It matters little whether a visitor knows how to look, and "become a better citizen thanks also to the museum [...]. One gains access to culture when one learns to read, to see and to reason, not when one pays for a ticket. Museums have always been born and have grown for the sake of citizens, not tourists[2]".
Granted that tourists too can be counted among citizens, it is absolutely true that the standards for evaluating museums today in fact relate solely to their power of attraction.
It is precisely on the basis of this assumption that, ten years ago, it was decided to transfer to Amelia the statue of Germanicus, formerly displayed at the Museo Archeologico of Perugia, since it was state property. A bronze artefact more than two metres tall, of a kind of which few exist in the world. It is well known that the need for raw material and a certain contempt for paganism produced countless meltings-down in the medieval period. Many statues thus became bells, whose chimes often rang out in Etruscan and Roman.
The complex affair of the statue arises, as is known, from the tenacious identity claims of the community of Amelia, where it was found in 1963, but what weighed more heavily was the conviction of a guaranteed economic benefit. The mayoral candidate even built his election campaign upon it. Memorable in this regard was the protest of the delegation from Amelia, led by him right into the museum of Perugia, complete with slogans and placards proclaiming "Free Germanicus".
Heavy political pressure and a substantial indifference flaunted by the Comune and Province of Perugia thus helped to deprive a national museum of an absolute masterpiece. And here we return to the aforementioned article four of the unknown notarial deed. Could the local administrations have opposed it? Or perhaps produced some reaction? Is it right that the most important national archaeological museum in the region should display only the photograph of a masterpiece whose restoration costs it bore and of which it is also the legitimate owner?
As things currently stand, the statue of the Roman general Nero Claudius Drusus, known as Germanicus, is granted on loan, renewable by the Soprintendenza; yet even by the criteria in force, which we know to be based on visitor numbers, that artefact ought not to be there. Works of art belong to the whole of humanity, and their aesthetic enjoyment should be facilitated as far as possible. The question therefore does not concern the aspirations of the community of Amelia, but rather the interest of a wider community. The statue's historical and artistic importance would indeed deserve far greater visibility than its present placement affords. Neither Perugia, paradoxically, nor still less Amelia, therefore appears adequate. But if the Museo Archeologico Nazionale dell'Umbria, based in Perugia, has the institutional task of bearing witness to the main aspects of the archaeology of the territory, then the detachment of a monument of such importance from the region's principal archaeological hub, in the name of an artificial cultural federalism, is not comprehensible. The debate may begin.

Notes

[1] Deed no. 2056/5702 of the Tei notary's office in Perugia. Registration: 08/02/1958.

[2] F. Cervini, La tutela è morta e di tutela si può anche morire, in "Micomega" 6/10.

Marco Saioni. An official of the Soprintendenza per i Beni archeologici dell'Umbria and a professional journalist. He is a regular contributor to the Umbrian desk of Il Messaggero. He recently edited the guide to the archaeological museum, Invito al Museo (Effe F. Fabbri, Perugia 2009) and is the author of the stories gathered in Voci dal Museo. L'archeologia dell'Umbria tra storia e fantasia (Effe F. Fabbri, Perugia 2010).