Vatican Museums

The Room IX is entirely dedicated to the collection of the Guglielmi di Vulci Marquises, formed during the early decades of the nineteenth century following the excavations carried out between 1828 and 1848 at the Sant’Agostino and di Camposcala estates, in the territory of the ancient city of Vulci, the same period as that of the birth of the Gregorian Etruscan Museum in 1837. The collection was displayed in Palazzo Guglielmi in Civitavecchia until the beginning of the twentieth century, when it was divided into two portions which were subsequently received by the Vatican Museums: the first was donated by Pope Pius XI in 1935 by Benedetto Guglielmi, and the second, inherited by Giacinto and transported to Rome to his family abode, was acquired only in 1987.
The Guglielmi collection is made up of around 800 objects dating from between the ninth and first centuries B.C., from the Iron Age (Villanovan culture) up to and including the entire Hellenistic period. Aside from prized Etruscan bronzes and local ceramics of differing production and chronology (clay, bucchero, Etrusco-Corinthian ceramic, black and red-figure, overpainted), there is a strong presence of imported Greek ceramics, for which Vulci constituted one of the principal markets. The most conspicuous nucleus in the collection is that of Attic ceramics, especially black-figure pottery, in accordance with recurrent statistics in southern Etruria.
In the adjoining Room X there is a further selection from the Guglielmi Collection focusing on some aspects of the civilisation of Vulci between the second half of the sixth and the first half of the fifth century B.C., through the objects found in the tombs of high-ranking members of the society of this important Etruscan city.
Locally produced bronzes of fine workmanship, including weapons, drinking vessels, parts of furniture and more, are displayed alongside images of Athenian ceramics imported to Etruria. In the whole, we find references both to real life (athleticism and music, military exercise, symposium) and to epic tales and the world of heroes and gods (Artemis and Apollo, Heracles and Dionysus, Aeneas and Anchises), seen through Greek eyes in the case of the painted vases, but understood, assimilated and reworked by the Etruscan society of the time, which shared the values of the Hellenic culture.