Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography

The Luigi Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography is a public and research museum in Rome, Italy, focused on the study of prehistory and ethnography. Established in 1875 and inaugurated on March 14, 1876, by its founder Luigi Pigorini, the institution historically served as a central hub for coordinating archaeological excavations and disseminating their results across Italy. Since 2016, the museum has been incorporated into the newly instituted Museo delle Civiltà, directed by Andrea Viliani, merging with other national collections. It remains owned by the Italian Ministry of Culture.

The museum's origins trace to 1870, when Luigi Pigorini, appointed head of the General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums in Rome, proposed a museum dedicated to the development of civilization on Italian soil. Inaugurated in 1876 as the Regio Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico di Roma by Education Minister Ruggero Bonghi, it was initially housed in a wing of the Palazzo del Collegio Romano. This site was chosen because it already contained the Museo Kircheriano, a collection of antiquities and curiosities assembled by Father Athanasius Kircher since 1651, which had been seized by the newly formed Italian state in 1873. Under Pigorini's joint directorship, the two institutions were merged as the Musei Preistorico Etnografico e Kircheriano. To build the collection, Director General Giuseppe Fiorelli called upon approximately 35 inspectors to contribute prehistoric relics from their regions. Donations and acquisitions followed, including 4,000 stone tools from Concezio Rosa in the Abruzzo and 700 objects from Rodolfo Lanciani's excavations in Veii in the early 1890s. Following Pigorini's death in 1925, the museum was renamed in his honor. Between 1962 and 1977, prompted by the 6th International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences held in Rome in 1962, the museum relocated to the EUR district. In 2011, the collections of the dissolved Museo Africano were incorporated, and in 2016 the institution merged into the Museo delle Civiltà.

By the time of Pigorini's death in 1925, the museum had amassed over 170,000 items. The collection is divided into two primary sectors: prehistory and ethnography. The prehistoric section focuses predominantly on Italian prehistory, featuring early human evolution, burial customs, and lithic industries. The ethnographic section contains objects from every non-European continent, documenting the material culture of populations worldwide. Its foundational core came from the Kircherianum, which held items from Capuchin missions in the Congo and Angola, and Jesuit missions in China, Brazil, and Canada, as well as Hawaiian objects from James Cook's third voyage. It later absorbed 18th and 19th century collections from Italian explorers, cardinals, and monarchs, including objects from Cardinal Flavio Chigi Senior and Cardinal Stefano Borgia. Pigorini also secured agreements with the Ministry of Public Education and the Navy to bring back objects and photographs from transoceanic scientific expeditions, while the Italian Geographical Society deposited ethnographic finds from its own expeditions, such as those by Giacomo Bove in Tierra del Fuego and Romolo Gessi in East Africa.

The museum houses several highly significant artifacts. Among the most notable are the Praeneste fibula, the oldest known inscription in the Latin language, and the Upper Paleolithic Venus of Savignano. The prehistoric department holds Neolithic artifacts from Lake Bracciano, including a roughly 10 meter long monoxyle dugout canoe carved from oak, recovered from the submerged site of La Marmotta near Anguillara Sabazia. Other key prehistoric pieces include Neanderthal skull fragments from the Saccopastore site and the Guattari Cave at Circeo, lithic industries from the Grotta Polesini, and a field reconstruction of the Lower Paleolithic camp at Castel di Guido. The ethnographic section features notable regional collections. The African section, which absorbed 60,000 objects from the former Museo Africano, includes Nigerian ivory objects and Congo basin fetishes. The Asian collection comprises the Vincenzo Ragusa fund of 4,172 Japanese objects, the Giuseppe Ros fund of 2,000 Chinese domestic items, the 1,200 piece Burmese Fea collection purchased in 1889, and Enrico Hillyer Giglioli's Chinese and Japanese jades and Tibetan Buddhist objects. The Oceanic collection includes approximately 15,000 objects, notably from New Guinea via collectors like Lamberto Loria, Luigi Maria d'Albertis, and Otto Finsch. The Americas section features Mexican mosaic masks and Amazonian material culture.

From its inauguration in 1876 until 1923, the museum occupied a wing of the Palazzo del Collegio Romano, a late 16th century building constructed by the Jesuit order in the center of Rome. Between 1962 and 1977, the museum relocated to the EUR district, specifically to the Palazzo delle Scienze on Piazza Guglielmo Marconi. This building is a prime example of Italian Rationalism, the architectural style typical of the EUR neighborhood, characterized by rectangular and square lines. The museum space is divided into two distinct sections across three floors connected by large staircases.

The museum is located at Piazza Guglielmo Marconi 14 in Rome's EUR district. It operates under the ownership of the Italian Ministry of Culture. Since September 2016, it has functioned as a constituent part of the Museo delle Civiltà, currently directed by Andrea Viliani, which also incorporates the Museo nazionale delle arti e tradizioni popolari, the Museo dell'Alto Medioevo, and the Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale. The institution is currently undergoing a critical research process regarding its colonial-era artifacts in preparation for a future exhibition layout within the Museo delle Civiltà.