Archaeological Museum of Aidone

The Archaeological Museum of Aidone is a regional museum in Aidone, a town in the province of Enna in central Sicily, Italy. Housed in a former Capuchin convent dedicated to Saint Francis, the museum was inaugurated on 20 October 198原位 and preserves the findings of over thirty years of excavations at the ancient city of Morgantina. Its collections are ordered according to chronological and thematic criteria, spanning from prehistory through the Hellenistic period. The museum has gained particular international prominence since 2009 as the recipient of major repatriated antiquities, including the celebrated Goddess of Morgantina, returned from the J. Paul Getty Museum after a prolonged legal dispute between Italy and the United States.

The museum was inaugurated in the summer of 1984, with the Italian source specifying the precise date of 20 October 1984. It was established to house and display the archaeological finds from Morgantina, an ancient settlement whose systematic excavation had been underway for more than three decades. The institution remained relatively modest in profile until the 2010s, when it became the focal point of high-profile restitutions of looted antiquities. Between December 2009 and spring 2011, the museum received three major groups of objects from American institutions: on 13 December 2009, two archaic acroliths returned from the University of Virginia Museum; on 5 December 2010, a sixteen-piece silver service came back from the Metropolitan Museum of New York; and in March 2011, the so-called Goddess of Morgantina was returned by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu. The Goddess of Morgantina was formally presented to the public on 17 May 2011, in the presence of authorities.

The collections are arranged across three main rooms and follow a chronological and thematic organization. They begin with prehistoric and protohistoric materials from the Castellucciano village at Morgantina, including polished basalt stone axes, tiny spindles, and handmade ceramic fragments with incised linear decoration. The early Iron Age Sicilian phase is represented by achromatic carinated pottery in red and brown paste, related to the Ausonian culture of Lipari. The period from the ninth to the mid-fifth century BC documents the coexistence of Sicel and Greek cultures, featuring architectural terracottas, pithoi, and fine painted pottery. The classical and Hellenistic periods, down to the destruction of Morgantina in 211 BC, are represented mainly by terracottas from the necropolis and from the urban sanctuaries of Demeter and Persephone. A recently arranged room also displays finds from the North Baths at Contrada Agnese, dedicated to Aphrodite or Cybele, which feature an ogival vault of hollow terracotta tubes designed to withstand vertical and lateral thrust.

Among the museum's most significant objects is the Goddess of Morgantina, a 2.24-2.25 metre acrolithic statue carved between 425 and 400 BC. The face and naked parts of the body are in marble, while the drapery is in local calcareous tuff; the sculptor is thought to have been a direct disciple of Phidias working in Magna Graecia. The statue was illegally excavated, purchased by the Getty, and returned to Italy in March 2011. Also of exceptional importance are the two archaic acroliths returned from the University of Virginia in December 2009, comprising two marble heads, three hands, and three feet, probably belonging to the goddesses Demeter and Kore. The silver service returned from the Metropolitan Museum in December 2010 consists of sixteen pieces for ritual and table use, belonging to an individual named Eupolemos according to votive inscriptions on an arula. A headless limestone statue of Demeter found in the central sanctuary in 1955 provided crucial evidence linking the Getty Aphrodite to Morgantina. Other notable pieces include the large black-glaze lamp with three spouts, a fish dish perhaps from Syracuse, and the great krater by Euthymides with symposium and amazonomachy scenes used for public banquets.

The museum is housed in the former Capuchin convent attached to the church of Saint Francis of Assisi. The building's adaptation for museum useually purposes has retained the original spatial character, with the former sacristy now used to display objects of domestic, agricultural, and religious daily life. The convent setting provides an intimate scale for the archaeological collections, with the three main exhibition rooms and additional spaces for special displays such as the recently arranged room for the North Baths finds.

The Archaeological Museum of Aidone is located in the town of Aidone, province of Enna, in central Sicily. As a regional museum, it operates under Italian state administration. The museum is open to the public, and the Goddess of Morgantina is currently on public display. Its collections make it an essential destination for understanding the archaeology of Morgantina and the cultural history of ancient Sicily, particularly following the high-profile restitutions that have returned major works to their original archaeological context.