PARCO ARCHEOLOGICO E ANTIQUARIUM DI CASTELSEPRIO

L'Antiquarium, inaugurated in 2009, is housed in the former convent of Saint John, small 13th century Franciscan monastery, transformed several times over the course of time. Abandoned by the religious in the 16th century, the building later became a farmhouse, before being recovered and transformed into museum space. The layout enhances the original rooms of the convent cells and the square apse church, which preserves 16th-century frescoes.

Le five exhibition halls, overlooking a quadrangular courtyard enclosed by an enclosure wall, they house artefacts from the numerous archaeological investigations conducted in Castelseprio from mid-twentieth century and still ongoing. Ceramics, glass, metal artefacts, epigraphs and frescoes document the long history of the site: from the first frequentations between the end of the Bronze Age and the early Iron Age (10th - 9th century BC), through the’Roman Imperial Age (1st-3rd century AD), until the period of maximum development of the castrum between the 4th and 5th centuries AD., with the following steps Longobard and Carolingian (7th-9th centuries).

Coins and objects of everyday life finally tell the last stages of settlement life, from 13th to 16th century, before and after the Visconti destruction of the castrum in 1287, giving a continuous and articulated picture of the history of Castelseprio.