The Etruscans at the Normale - exhibition at the Torre del Conte Ugolino

Gli Etruschi alla Normale - mostra alla Torre del Conte Ugolino

Category:

EXHIBITS, ART AND CULTURE

Place:

Palazzo dell'Orologio, Piazza dei Cavalieri

Start date:

18 Oct 2025

End date:

31 Dec 2025

The exhibition ‘Gli Etruschi alla Normale’ (The Etruscans at the Normale) opens on Saturday 18 October until 31 December 2025 in the Torre del Conte Ugolino in Piazza dei Cavalieri. It will offer visitors a series of Etruscan artefacts and artefacts from the Cortona site and from the excavations that the Scuola Normale Superiore has carried out over time in Pisa. The exhibition is curated by Gianfranco Adornato, professor of Classical Archaeology, who previously curated the exhibition “Le vite del marmo” (The Lives of Marble) in the same museum space, the Torre del Conte Ugolino, inside the Palazzo dell'Orologio in Pisa.

The first part of the exhibition consists of Etruscan ceramic materials from the Orientalising-Archaic period found during the excavation for the construction of the Fermi College in Via S. Apollonia in Pisa. The exhibits document the earliest phase of occupation of this area. Thanks to the contribution of the Pisa Foundation, a selection of these objects is being presented for the first time to “tell the story” of aspects of daily life in Etruscan Pisa. The second part of the exhibition consists of a lid with a dormant figure and three small urns with a bas-relief scene on the front, preserved in the Library of the Palazzone di Cortona, dating back to the Hellenistic period.

The Etruscan artefacts are being exhibited to the public for the first time: for conservation purposes, non-invasive diagnostic investigations into the polychromy have been carried out using molecular spectroscopy, the preliminary results of which are presented here in preview. The exhibition is accompanied by explanatory panels and will be presented to the public on Saturday 18 October at 5 p.m. at the Palazzo della Carovana, followed by the inauguration at 6 p.m., during the opening ceremony of the academic year at the Normale.

Carmine De Mizio, Federico Figura, Giulietta Guerini, Andrea Guerrini and Silvia Marini collaborated on the exhibition design. Admission to the exhibition is free, Monday to Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.