Museo Lapidario Maffeiano

The Museo Lapidario Maffeiano is a museum of ancient inscriptions and stone monuments at Piazza Bra 28 in Verona, in the Veneto region of Italy, beside the Teatro Filarmonico and close to the Arena. It is one of the oldest public museums in Europe, founded in the early eighteenth century by the scholar and writer Scipione Maffei, who gathered Greek, Roman, Etruscan and later inscriptions and opened them to the public in 1745. The building was designed to house the collection, with a colonnaded courtyard whose walls are lined with carved stones. The museum was formerly part of the Accademia Filarmonica complex. The holdings include Roman funerary altars, tombstones, dedicatory inscriptions, reliefs, sarcophagi, Greek stelae and Etruscan pieces, together with items from the Veronese territory and from other parts of the Mediterranean. Maffei arranged the pieces according to type and subject rather than a modern chronological scheme, and the display still reflects the Enlightenment approach of an antiquarian cabinet, with stones set into walls in rows. This makes the museum valuable as a document of early museology as well as for its content. The inscriptions provide evidence of the people, trades, families and religious life of Roman Verona and are a resource for epigraphers. Conservation of the stones is ongoing, and some parts of the collection have been rearranged or relocated over time. The museum is run by the civic museums of Verona, and opening hours are variable, so they should be confirmed before visiting. A combined ticket with Castelvecchio has been listed. The museum is quiet, small and often overlooked, making it a rewarding stop for visitors with an interest in the ancient world or in the history of museums.