Italy Guide
Marche
Museo Archeologico Oliveriano
Opening time: July & Aug Mon– Sat 4–7pm; Sept– June Mon– Sat 9am– noon on request at the adjacent library
Telephone: 0721.33344
Price: free
Pésaro's archeological museum, the Museo Archeologico Oliveriano, is housed in the Palazzo Almerici and has a small but unusual collection of local finds. Among the relics from an Iron Age necropolis at nearby Novilara are a child's tomb filled with miniature domestic utensils and a tomb slab carved with pear-shaped figures rowing a square-sailed boat into battle. Even more intriguing is the collection of ex-votives (religious offerings) – breasts, feet, heads and even a dog – collected not from an early Catholic church but from a Roman sacred grove at San Veneranda (3km from Pésaro), consecrated in the second century BC.