Ground Floor. The Roman Lapidary Museum, the Estense Lapidary Museum, and the Giuseppe Graziosi Plaster Cast Museum

From the grand door that opens onto Via Emilia, visitors enter the grand atrium where they are immediately surrounded by the ancient ambiances of the Roman Lapidary Museum. The museum exhibits beautiful funerary monuments recovered from the necropolises of the city of Mutina (the Roman-era name for Modena), including the imposing Ara di Vetilia Egloge, an altar erected by the Roman freedwoman whose name it bears.

Here, you can admire other Roman-era archeological discoveries and sarcophagi in the Estense Lapidary Museum. Spend a few moments walking among the imposing stone coffins and the white tombstones, silent witnesses of a distant and memorable era.

The Giuseppe Graziosi Plaster Cast Museum is to one side of the portico and displays terracotta models, original plaster casts, and copies, drawings, etchings, aquatints, and lithographs by the great Modena-based artist Giuseppe Graziosi (1879-1942).