MUSEO ARCHEOLOGICO REGIONALE PAOLO ORSI

1. MUSEO ARCHEOLOGICO REGIONALE PAOLO ORSI The museum has been built in 1967 in a daisy shape, with a lot of green space around. It contains laboratories and an auditorium to see films. The illumination is artificial, even if could be used the natural one, they are many materials as crystals, perspex, policarbonato, to improve the reading of the pieces. In the notice-boards the varied archaeological sites are showed.

3. Of the three kinds of elephants , a skull and crossbones and some teeth are preserved. They have unknown aspects, some kinds of animals lived during the Sicilian Prehistory. La culture of Thapsos is one of the more documented in the museum. The funeral outfits are constituted by ceramics. Next to the native ceramics there are those Mycenaean ones. After the culture of Tthapsos there is that of Pantalica, that covers a period of time that goes from the XIII century B.C. to the half of VII century B.C..

5. The manufactured articles of Megara Hyblaea exposed, have allowed the knowledge of the organizational order and the evolution of the urban area, through interesting documents of archaic sculpture. In Syracuse are material, found in Ortigia, of the ancient age of remarkable importance, because they specify moments of the urban life that first were unknown. Earthen idols represent revered divinities. Many materials originate from the necropolises of Siracusa. The architectural earthenware, are proposed according to criterions that underline the decorations. There are material deriving from the extra-urban sanctuaries, with characters of the dedalico style.

7. In the third sector of the museum there are material deriving from the subcolonies, made in limestone of Akrai and Kasmenai, that introduces the more unusual urban fittings of all the Greek cities of Sicily. The most important exposure of the third subcolony is the figure of a rider. Very large is the panorama of the manufactured articles deriving from the Greek cities of Sicily some of them originate from the excavations Orsi in Gela and Agrigento: big sarcophagi with decorations inside. The funeral equips are constituted by Corinthian and Ionic vases, black and red figures. The red muddy ground have allowed the formation of pieces that constitute a testimony of manufactured articles diffused in the Greek sanctuaries.