Molise does not exist.
This is the
running joke, and if you cross the whole region in one go on the motorway, it
may seem almost mtrue, but the Samnite Museum in Campobasso alone is enough to
prove that Molise exists now and certainly existed in the past.
Finding
myself in town, I returned to visit it after an absence of a few years due to
the pandemic, on one of those autumn mornings as sweet as spring.
I crossed
the sunny Corso and stopped for a coffee in Piazza Pepe, which had been
transformed into an open-air salon. I passed a small shop on Via Cannavina,
which always gives me an overwhelming urge to buy something superfluous and
fancy, said hello to the statue of Fred Buongusto and climbed the steps to
Palazzo Lanzarotta, where the museum is located.
The Samnite Museum has recently been renovated and has a modern and well kept exhibition, with detailed explanations of each piece, the history of the finds and the overall picture.
It is not
huge, but that is a purely Italian point of view... many countries have smaller
national with pieces of lesser quality.
Bonus, the
presence of some 'tactile' exhibits, i.e. reconstructions of the exhibits that
you can touch and hold, and a pdf guide that can be downloaded from the Beni
Culturali website.
Malus, the
app with the museum's audio guide, which would be good in itself, but was not
updated to the latest Android versions and so was not working on my Samsung.
The
exhibition starts from the prehistoric era, but for prehistory, if you are in
Molise, you should go to the Pineta di Isernia exhibit, one of the most
important palaeoanthropological finds in the world.
The remains
of necropolises and villages illustrate the life of ancient populations,
perhaps primitive, but who, as the presence of Baltic amber jewellery shows,
were already linked to continental trade networks.
This did not change with their Samnite descendants, the great adversaries of Rome, who also developed a rich material civilization in close contact with other Mediterranean civilisations.
Finds of
Greek and Punic coins, pottery and even sculpture show that at least the local
aristocracy was wealthy and cultured enough to seek out and love the beautiful
and refined.
Roman
Molise begins with a splendid statuette of Venus in Carrara marble, the typical
votive sculpture found in a stately domus of the late Republic or early Empire.
Its uniqueness lies in its provenance: it came from an illegal excavation and was fortunately recovered by the police after being abandoned. A clear symbol of the necessity and complexity of protecting italian immense artistic heritage.
The archaeological remains from the Roman period (and not just the museums, just visit the excavations at Sepino or Pietrabbondante) testify to a rich and lively area.
The remains
of the sanctuary dedicated to Hercules Aiserniui bear witness to this, with
stratified layers from the earliest Samnite period to the spread of
Christianity.
The last
part of the museum is dedicated to the early Middle Ages, which, unlike in
other parts of Italy, is also rich in fascinating discoveries.
Personally,
I have always been particularly fascinated by the exhibition of finds from the
necropolis of Campomarino.
Paul
Deacon, in his History of the Lombards, tells us how a Bulgarian 'count' called
Alzecone led his people to Molise by an act of submission to the Duke of
Benevento.
The
Bulgarians of that time were very different from the Bulgarians of today: they
were a collection of pagan Turkic-speaking tribes, nomadic horsemen from the
steppes, who arrived in the Balkans in the wake of the Huns, Avars and
Hungarians.
Archaeology
has recently confirmed the truth of this fantastic story by discovering this
extraordinary necropolis in Campomarino.
Tombs of
warriors, buried with their armour, swords, bows and above all their favourite
horses, and of noble ladies with precious jewelry of Central Asian or Byzantine
manufacture.
A piece of
the Central Asian steppe in the mountains of Molise.
Another very interesting detail is that among the equipment of the buried horses we find the earliest examples of stirrups known in Italy.
The most
beautiful of all, and a testimony to the incredible diversity of cultural
influences, is the tomb of a young warrior in his early twenties, who probably
died of stab wounds and who, in addition to the usual trousseau of weapons,
bows and horse, wore a precious gold ring with a carnelian on his finger. The carnelian
stone is finely decorated on both sides: the first, carved in Roman times,
shows the symbols of the cura annonae, the imperial tax authorities, while the
other is engraved with a Lombard coin.
This
fascinating mixture of eras and civilizations could be evidence, as Paul the
Deacon tells us, that the young man was a Bulgarian nobleman to whom the
Lombard dukes had granted feudal authority over these borderlands.
The visit
to the museum lasts about a couple of hours and ends in a small terraced garden
with Roman tombstones and inscriptions, where I was greeted by the sound of
hymns from the noon mass in the nearby church.
A pleasant
visit that shows how Campobasso hides precious treasures for the benefit of the
few who visit it.
But isn't
it true that sometimes the places we think doesn’t exist are the most wonderful
discoveries? Why should Molise be any different?
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