YOUR FLORENCE EXPERIENCE

FINE ARTS AND
CULTURE ACADEMY

MAF - Florence’s Museum of Archaeology

As of March 1, 2018, the Uffizi ticket allows free entry into Florence’s Museum of Archaeology (MAF), so now is your chance to go pay a visit to its wonderful collection of ancient manufacts.
The museum, located in piazza Santissima Annunziata, inaugurated in 1870 in the buildings of the Cenacolo di Fuligno on via Faenza, though at that time it only comprised Etruscan and Roman manufacts. As the collection grew, the museum was relocated in its current location, in the Palazzo della Crocetta, a palace built in 1620 for the daughter of Ferdinando I de Medici, princess Maria Maddalena de Medici.
As a matter of fact, a large part of the collections at the MAF comes from the Medici’s holdings.
It is the largest museum of its kind after Villa Giulia in Rome and contains one of the most important collections of Etruscan art of the world.
The museum is also famous for its Egyptian section, second in size only to Turin’s Egyptian Museum.
The exhibition entitled “The Art of Donating. New Acquisitions of Florence’s National Archaeological Museum” provides yet another reason to visit this rich museum. Open until March 10, 2019, it is showcasing recent acquisitions and 125 works donated to the museum: Roman statues, portraits and sarcophagi, Greek figurative vases, two modern reconstructions of a Greek ship and a Greek musical instrument called aulos.
That said, the museum does not really need exhibitions to attract visitors, as its permanent collection already includes extraordinary pieces such the Orator, Minerva, François Vase, the Fibula Corsini and the famous Chimera of Arezzo which is surely the main attraction the museum which is surely one of the museum’s main attractions: the bronze statue representing a mythological hybrid creature, offspring of Typhon and Echidna, a lion with the head of a goat arising from its back and a tail ending with a snake's head.
The Chimera was found in the Tuscan city of Arezzo in 1553, it was such an exceptional artwork that Grand Duke Cosimo I de Medici immediately claimed it for its collection and decided to put it on display in the hall of Leo X in Palazzo Vecchio.

Florence’s Museum of Archaeology is a museum for those who want to retrace the history of our country going further back from the Renaissance era, and get a glimpse into the life of the very ancient civilizations whose cultures set the foundations for our own and shaped our world.

Inscrivez-vous

Tenez-vous au courant sur nos nouvelles...inscrivez-vous à notre newsletter!