Nuoro, National Archaeological Museum G. Asproni

It is located in the building that belonged to Giorgio Asproni, an illustrious nineteenth-century intellectual and politician. The exhibition, currently limited to the ground floor, is divided into six rooms, offering an insight into the very rich archaeological heritage of the province of Nuoro and of human history from the Neolithic to the early Middle Ages. Some sections are renewed every semester. The first palaeontological room presents an important vertebrate deposit from Mount Tuttavista (Orosei) and the Corbeddu Cave (Oliena). The Neolithic period is represented by vases, idolets, arrowheads and obsidian and fern tools, found in shelters under rocks, caves and necropolises (Oliena, Ollolai, Orgosolo, Orroli). This is followed by materials from the chalcolithic cultures of Filigosa (Macomer), Abealzu (Urzulei), Monte Claro (Oliena, Nuoro, Orroli, Sorgono), the Campaniform vessel (Oniferi, Gavoi) and the culture of Bonnanaro with the “Tomb of Sisaia” (Dorgali) containing a skeleton of a woman suffering from serious diseases with a drilled skull. The nuragic section with models of stone nuraghes, various lithic and bronze materials from nuraghes, villages and tombs of giants is of great interest. A bronze metallurgy laboratory is also being rebuilt, with copper ingots, an impact crucible, a casting matrix to produce working tools. The skill of Nuragic metallurgists is documented by elegant bronze basins and the finds of Su Tempiesu di Orune, one of the major nuragic sanctuaries in the Nuoro area. Equally significant are the finds from the Sa Sedda 'e Sos Carros fountain, which also returned more than one hundred and fifty kilos of bronze.
The exhibition also includes materials from some of the most important Nuragic sanctuaries in Nuoro and from the Roman age (inscriptions, reconstruction of a tomb and a seabed with the remains of a shipwrecked cargo). The museum itinerary includes early medieval material in Nuoro, with the Renaissance silver and earthenware of the church of San Pietro di Galtellì and the castle of La Fava in Posada.

Why it's important to visit it
The Asproni museum exhibits, among other things, the material that comes from the main places of worship connected with the waters of Sardinia during the Bronze and Iron Ages, with a collection of bronzes that is among the main artistic manifestations in the Mediterranean for this chronological phase.