The Civic Museum of Cuneo opens the doors of its museum storage rooms to reveal unexhibited artifacts
On the occasion of the opening of the fourth edition of Cuneo Archeofilm, free guided tours for groups at Palazzo Santa Croce on Thursday 1 October at 4:00 pm and 5:00 pm
On Thursday, October 1st, from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM, on the opening day of Cuneo Archeofilm, the International Film Festival of Archaeology, Art, and Environment, the Cuneo Civic Museum will exceptionally open the doors of the Cuneo museum collections' storage rooms in Palazzo Santa Croce (Via Santa Croce 6) to display the artifacts they contain, with a particular focus on those discovered during the excavations of the Lombard necropolis of Sant'Albano Stura, the largest in Italy. Two guided tours are scheduled at 4:00 PM and 5:00 PM, organized in collaboration with the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts, and Landscape for the Provinces of Alessandria, Asti, and Cuneo. Led by Gian Battista Garbarino, an archaeologist with the Superintendency, visitors will be able to see Lombard grave goods and other artifacts from the Cuneo area not yet on display at the Museum. Given the limited space, to participate, please call 0171/634175 or email museo@comune.cuneo.it.
The Lombard grave goods, discovered in the 842 tombs excavated in Sant'Albano Stura during the preventive surveys for the Asti-Cuneo motorway between 2006 and 2018, directed by the Superintendency, were transferred to the storage facilities of the Civic Museum of Cuneo in the fall of 2022. The Municipality of Cuneo and the Superintendency actively collaborated in the reorganization of the spaces on the third floor of the former Santa Croce Hospital to house civic and state cultural assets (not exhibited in the museum itineraries) previously located in various warehouses around the city, in Cuneo, or in ministerial warehouses in Turin and Alessandria.
Today, the repository houses a vast and varied collection of cultural assets: artistic assets (230 paintings, marble and bronze sculptures); historical and documentary assets (ancient and modern numismatic collections, plaster casts); ethnographic and anthropological assets (wooden objects and furnishings, period weapons, traditional costumes, period clothing, dolls, textiles, and sacred vestments); naturalistic assets (minerals, stuffed animals owned by the city); and archaeological assets owned by both the city (approximately 450 finds from extraterritorial collections) and the state (in addition to grave goods from the Lombard necropolis of Sant'Albano Stura, other artifacts from the Cuneo area discovered during the 20th century: bricks, ceramics, metal, glass, bone, and stone artifacts, for a total of nearly 8,000 items).
A selection of the best-preserved Lombard grave goods, discovered during archaeological excavations conducted in Sant'Albano Stura between 2009 and 2011, have been on display since 2016 in the first-floor hall of the Cuneo Civic Museum (Via Santa Maria 10). This original, innovative display, designed to appeal to a new museum audience and incorporating cutting-edge technology, was created thanks to resources from the municipality and the CRC Foundation.
