Florence Archaeological Tours / ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM

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If you love Florence, archaeology and the great civilizations of the past like me, this museum will surprise you.

Founded in 1870 when Florence was the capital of Italy, the National Archaeological Museum houses an incredible variety of finds. It is the most important museum in Italy for the collections of Etruscan Art and the second (after the one in Turin) for collections coming from Ancient Egypt housed in the Egyptian Museum of Florence, which is located in the same building. And despite its importance the museum is almost always empty, neglected by tourists who come to Florence only to visit the 'cradle of the Renaissance' …

In the first part of the visit we will discover the precious funerary objects coming from very rich Etruscan tombs

bronze weapons and armor, gold jewelry and pottery coming from the excavations of numerous necropolises. On the second floor we will admire the great Etruscan bronzes discovered in the sixteenth century and passed into the collections of the Grand Duke Cosimo I: the Chimera, the Orator and the statue of Minerva.

We will then visit the rooms of the Egyptian Museum, retracing the history of the ancient civilization developed along the banks of the Nile. Among the masterpieces of this section are important stone statues of pharaohs and Egyptian dignitaries, a rich collection of painted sarcophagi and funerary objects and a precious wooden Egyptian chariot found in a tomb of the Eighteenth Dynasty, unique find in Europe!

On the third floor of the museum is the section dedicated to the Greek world.

Here we will discover absolute masterpieces such as the famous François Vase, an attic crater with black figures entirely painted with mythological scenes. The precious ceramic collections are accompanied by those of Greek marble sculpture, among which the Kouros-Apollo Milani statue stands out. We can also admire a precious collection of ancient bronzes such as the great Medici Riccardi Horse Head, part of a life-size equestrian statue already in the collections of Lorenzo the Magnificent.