Vereto Archaeological Museum
The Vereto Archaeological Museum (MAV) is housed in the rooms of Palazzo Romano, the noble residence of Liborio Romano, a jurist and politician from Salento and a member of the first Italian Parliament from 1861 to 1865.
The ancient settlement of Vereto, a Messapian town and later a Roman municipium , stood on the elongated limestone ridge known locally as the “serra”, which at 120 metres high dominates much of the landscape.
The first room of the Museum begins the story of Vereto’s long history of settlement with a display of inscriptions in the Messapian language bearing the first signs of writing, evidence of the vast network of exchanges of ideas, knowledge and skills that involved the land of the Messapians in the most significant centuries of its culture.
Everyday objects, evidence of the material culture of ancient communities, are displayed in Room 2, where practices of the past are set alongside present-day customs. The large wall map then leads visitors to discover the residential areas, places of worship and contexts in which the archaeological finds were discovered.
The theme of the third room is end-of-life rituals. The burials of members of the Messapian elites and of citizens of the Roman town bear witness to the social and economic power of ancient communities: the objects on display, from the necropolises of Vereto, tell of funerary ceremonies and customs.
