PARCO ARCHEOLOGICO E ANTIQUARIUM DI CASTELSEPRIO

The Antiquarium has been housed since 2009 in the former convent of S. Giovanni, a small 13th-century Franciscan monastery, modified several times, abandoned by the monks in the 16th century, later turned into a farmstead and finally transformed into a museum with the recovery of the spaces of the convent cells and the square apse church, which preserves the 16th-century frescoes. The five rooms, overlooking a quadrangular courtyard enclosed by a wall, display artefacts found during the numerous archaeological investigations conducted in Castelseprio since the mid-20th century and still in progress. These include ceramics, glass, metals, epigraphs, and frescoes, documenting the history of the site from the end of the Bronze Age/early Iron Age (10th-9th centuries B.C.), through the Roman Imperial Age (1st-3rd centuries A.D.), to the castrum's most fortunate period, between the 4th/Vth centuries A.D. and the Iron Age. A.D. and the Longobard and then Carolingian age (7th/8th and 9th centuries); coins and objects of daily use finally take us back to the last phases of the settlement's life, from the 13th to the 16th century, before and after the Visconti destruction of the castrum in 1287.