Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Palestrina

Top choice in Lazio

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This delightful museum occupies Palazzo Colonna Barberini, a Renaissance palace built atop the 2nd-century BC Santuario della Fortuna Primigenia. Its airy halls display an interesting collection of ancient sculpture and funerary artefacts, as well as some huge Roman mosaics. But the crowning glory is the breathtaking Mosaico Nilotico, a detailed 2nd-century BC mosaic depicting the flooding of the Nile and everyday life in ancient Egypt.

Outside, you can look around the surviving terraces of the ancient sanctuary which, in its pomp, covered much of what is now Palestrina's historic centre.

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