The Museo del Sannio is the main museum complex of the province of Benevento and one of the most important in Campania. Housed in the extraordinary architectural setting of the Church of Santa Sofia – which in 2011 became a UNESCO World Heritage site, with its beautiful cloister dating back to the twelfth century -, the museum allows a fascinating journey from prehistory to the contemporary age.

The first nucleus of the collection dates back to 1873 and had a first arrangement inside the Rocca dei Rettori, current home of the Historical Section. In 1928 the provincial administration acquired the church of Santa Sofia, transforming it into a provincial museum, reorganizing and expanding the exhibition in the following decades. At the end of the nineties of the last century, the renovation of part of the rooms of the north wing of the museum, and subsequently the collections, were also housed in a wing of the historic Palazzo Casiello. In 2014 an InfoPoint and Bookshop with the attached section “Sculptures and sarcophagi” were opened to the public. You can find them located in Piazza Matteotti.

The museum collection is one of the most varied and represents a shining example of the traditional territorial musealization. The collection has been formed over time, through a series of donations, purchases and entrustments coming from all over the territory. The museum collects historical evidence starting from the Samnite and Roman period, passing through the Lombard age, ranging from 400 to 800, up to the works of the most important national artists of the 20th century. The more than 50,000 exhibits cover a wide chronological span from prehistory to the present day, thanks to which it is possible to experience the development of taste and awareness defining the cultural heritage over the centuries.

The tour of the museum develops on the two floors of the monumental complex of Santa Sofia and in some rooms of the historic Palazzo Casiello, according to a chronological sequence. The Romanesque cloister, dating back to the twelfth century, belongs to the museum which, together with the church of Santa Sofia, in 2011 became part of the UNESCO serial site “Longobardi in Italia: I luoghi del potere“. The exhibition also includes the section “Sculptures and sarcophagi” of Roman age, housed inside the InfoPoint/Bookshop in Piazza Matteotti. The facility also has a rich library with a study room, and a conference room dedicated to the scholar Giovanni Vergineo. The heritage of the Museo del Sannio is completed by the “Egyptian section”, detached at the Arcos museum, and the complex of Sant’Ilario in Port’Aurea. Both can be visited with a single integrated ticket.

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• CUP (Booking Centre) 00 39 345 7542984
• Opening hours: continuous hours 9:00-19:00 from Tuesday to Sunday – closed on Mondays

How to reach the Museaum

The first nucleus of the collection dates back to 1873 and had a first arrangement inside the Rocca dei Rettori, current home of the Historical Section. In 1928 the provincial administration acquired the church of Santa Sofia, transforming it into a provincial museum, reorganizing and expanding the exhibition in the following decades. At the end of the nineties of the last century, the renovation of part of the rooms of the north wing of the museum, and subsequently the collections, were also housed in a wing of the historic Palazzo Casiello. In 2014 an InfoPoint and Bookshop with the attached section “Sculptures and sarcophagi” were opened to the public. You can find them located in Piazza Matteotti.

The museum collection is one of the most varied and represents a shining example of the traditional territorial musealization. The collection has been formed over time, through a series of donations, purchases and entrustments coming from all over the territory. The museum collects historical evidence starting from the Samnite and Roman period, passing through the Lombard age, ranging from 400 to 800, up to the works of the most important national artists of the 20th century. The more than 50,000 exhibits cover a wide chronological span from prehistory to the present day, thanks to which it is possible to experience the development of taste and awareness defining the cultural heritage over the centuries.

The tour of the museum develops on the two floors of the monumental complex of Santa Sofia and in some rooms of the historic Palazzo Casiello, according to a chronological sequence. The Romanesque cloister, dating back to the twelfth century, belongs to the museum which, together with the church of Santa Sofia, in 2011 became part of the UNESCO serial site “Longobardi in Italia: I luoghi del potere“. The exhibition also includes the section “Sculptures and sarcophagi” of Roman age, housed inside the InfoPoint/Bookshop in Piazza Matteotti. The facility also has a rich library with a study room, and a conference room dedicated to the scholar Giovanni Vergineo. The heritage of the Museo del Sannio is completed by the “Egyptian section”, detached at the Arcos museum, and the complex of Sant’Ilario in Port’Aurea. Both can be visited with a single integrated ticket.

Download the brochure

• CUP (Booking Centre) 00 39 345 7542984
• Opening hours: continuous hours 9:00-19:00 from Tuesday to Sunday – closed on Mondays

How to reach the Museaum

Of absolute value and originality for the time (foundation 762) is the plant, which has a hexagonal core surrounded by a decagonal ring, at the top are placed six large columns connected to each other by arches on which develops the dome.
The splendor is also witnessed by the remains of frescoes in the apses.

Not less important is the ancient monastery, of which remains the Cloister with the Romanesque colonnade, seat of the Museum of Sannio.
On 25 June 2011 the monumental complex of Santa Sofia was included in the World Heritage List of UNESCO as part of the serial site “The Lombards in Italy. The places of power (568-774 AD)”

Entrance: Piazza Santa Sofia
Opening hours: Monday to Sunday from 7am to midday and from 4pm to 7pm
Free admission

How to reach the Santa Sofia Church

Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2011, along with the Church of Santa Sofia in the serial site “I Longobardi in Italia. I luoghi del potere”, it bears witness to the medieval world in all its aspects.

Rebuilt in the twelfth century by the abbot John IV, as the capital with dedicatory inscription suggests, the cloister offers a vast repertoire of realistic and fantastic images, where monstrous figures and crusaders, rural works and Christological symbols, are elements endowed with a strong symbolic connotation.

As demonstrated by the different depictions on the pulvini that surmount the 47 columns of marble, alabaster and granite, it was farmed by several workers.

Particularly interesting is the ophitic column (knotted column), an architectural element of Romanesque art, and the pulvini depicting the “cycle of months”.

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• Telephone: CUP (booking centre) 0039 345 7542984
• Opening hour: continuous hours 9:00-19:00 from Tuesday to Sunday – closed on Mondays

How to reach the Cloister

The Wizard’s Garden, an integral part of Palazzo Casiello (formerly the abbot’s residence connected to the convent of Santa Sofia), is a permanent installation by Riccardo Dalisi, an internationally renowned designer and artist.

This work evokes the ancient legends of witches and magic long associated with the city of Benevento.

This explains the nature of the mysterious figures that inhabit the garden—iron and copper sculptures depicting strange animals, protagonists of spells, all dominated by the evocative figure of a wizard.

How to reach The Wizard’s Garden

The Egyptian section of the Museo del Sannio, located at the ARCOS museum, collects the finds coming from the temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis, “Lady of Benevento”.

The itinerary is arranged in several rooms and traces an ideal trip to the temple, starting from an “initiation” to the cult of the goddess, continuing in the area in front of the temple and finally ending in the sacred area where is the actual cell of the goddess. The Temple of Isis was built by the Emperor Domitian between 88 and 89 A.D. with materials coming directly from Egypt, peculiarity that made Benevento the place in the West keeping the highest concentration of original Egyptian artifacts, mostly statues. In Benevento, in fact, there was one of the most important temples of Isis of the Roman Empire.

The quantity and quality of the Nilotic findings discovered, largely in 1903, testify to the presence of an out of character sanctuary. Unlike the others temples of Isis in Italy, this is the only one in the pharaonic style as well as the only pharaonic temple in Europe. According to the hypothesis advanced by the German scholar W. Muller the sanctuaries in Benevento were even three: a Hellenistic-Roman temple dating back to the first century BC., to which the light marble statues supposedly belong; a second temple in the pharaonic style, wanted by Domitian, and a third smaller temple dedicated to the cult of Osiris Canopus. An avenue lined with sphinxes and statues of Horus-hawk (pictured below), Thot-baboon, goddess worshippers, priests and priestesses performing pharaonic cults, led to the temple which, however, was never identified. In 1826 the famous linguist Champollion translated the hieroglyphs on the two twin obelisks of Benevento that report the foundation of the temple by the legate Marco Rutilio Lupo. One pink granite obelisk is located in Piazza Papiniano, along Corso Garibaldi, the other (the four facades tell the same story) is displayed at the Museo del Sannio and has been restored, in exchange for the loan of some artifacts, by the experts from the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, for an exhibition held in March 2018.

Even now it is not possible to identify the place where the temple of Isis was located, but it was certainly one of the most important places of worship in the South, active for centuries until at least the Edict of Thessalonica (380 AD).

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• Telephone: CUP (booking centre) 0824 312465 – 345 7542984
• Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday from 9:00 to 19:00 – closed on Mondays

How to reach the Museaum

The Hortus Conclusus is located where once stood the garden of the medieval convent of the Dominican Fathers.

Since 1992 the permanent installation of the Beneventano artist Palladino, one of the greatest exponents of the Transavanguardia.

The Hortus wants to be a kind of art gallery free and immersed in greenery. The sculptural works of the artist (the horse, the disc, the elements related to water) coincide with remains from the Roman era (pieces of columns, capitals and pediments) creating a complex cultural path to decipher.

How to reach the Hortus Conclusus

The Rocca dei Rettori (Rectors’ fortress) in Benevento, consisting of two buildings close to one another – a medieval one and the other dating back to the Renaissance -, stands on the valley where the rivers Sabato and Calore flow into one another, in a strategic area of southern Italy halfway between the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Adriatic, along the Via Appia, later “Via Sacra of Langobardorum”.

In this valley epochal battles were fought: the one of the Romans against Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, in 257 B.C., or the one sung by Dante Alighieri in his “Divina Commedia” where, in 1266, in the struggle against the French of Charles of Anjou, Manfred of Swabia succumbed and his dream of a new Empire vanished.

The human settlements on the hill are very old: in the eighth century B.C. it housed a necropolis. In the fourth century B.C. the Samnites, settled in central-southern Italy, built a fortress just right here. Under the Romans the hill became “castellum aquae”, a thermal spot, fed by a branch of the aqueduct coming from Serino, recently brought to light by archaeological excavations.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Benevento, conquered by the Lombards in 570 A.D., became the capital of the Duchy and Principality of “southern Longobardia”. At the high point of its splendour, in 875 a fortified tower was built on the “castellum aquae” that is together, with Porta Somma, one of the points of access to the city, defended by high walls, located on the Via Appia.

In 1070, at the end of the Lombard period, with the Treaty of Worms the papal domination of the city started and continued almost uninterruptedly until 3 September 1860. In order to give a prestigious position and an adequate defence to his representatives in the city, called “Papal Rectors” – fiercely contested by a part of the citizens who refused the borders of the Papal State -, on 5 July 1320 Pope John XXII ordered the construction of a Palace at Porta Somma, next to the fortified Tower, modelled on the French fortress of Carcassonne. The building, indeed, was completed only in the eighteenth century, whereas the erection of the bell tower dates back to the nineteenth century.

In the fifteenth century, for more than a decade, during the fight against the D’Angiò for the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples, Alfonso of Aragon settled in the Rocca dei Rettori: the barons used to come to Benevento to swear their fealty to him.

In the sixteenth century, at the end of the umpteenth revolt, Rector Andreone of Artusini was killed: Pope Urban VIII ordered to complete the defences of the Fortress, moved Porta Somma out of the Tower, turning it into a prison, and raised new walls. In honour of the pope, a lion was erected on a Roman column that still “watches over” the entrance to the palace. The new works (except for the “lion”) were demolished after the First World War to make space for the Monument of the “Winged Victory” by Publio Morbiducci.

Today the Rocca dei Rettori, which preserves some of its ancient frescoes, such as the baroque “Crucifix”, the Vault of the President’s Hall and the walls of the Secretary’s Hall, is the institutional headquarters of the Province, but also an exhibition spot, a museum for permanent displays (the Section “Excellent Men” and the paintings by Virginia Tomescu Scrocco) and extemporaneous exhibitions. The beautiful garden surrounding the fortress, with stone artifacts from different eras and the installation “Memory is”, dedicated to the victims of the Shoah, offers a suggestive view.

• Telephone: CUP (booking centre) 345 7542984

How to reach the Rocca dei Rettori

Very close to the Arch of Trajan (to which it owes its name – because during the Lombard domination, this was incorporated into the new city walls, becoming the “golden” gate of the city) -, the complex includes the former Church of Sant’Ilario in Port’Aurea, an early medieval building and the remains of a building complex of the imperial era (II century AD) that testifies to an archaeological pre-existence.

The Church of Sant’Ilario, built between the end of the seventh and the first half of the eighth century, consists of an apsidal hall with two slightly unequal spans. The outer covering is formed by two separate lanterns with a pavilion roof.

Later a convent was added. Some of its remains are still visible; worthy of note are the cisterns and wells for the collection of water.

In the late ancient age, the complex was abandoned and only a part of it was recovered and incorporated into new walls, probably for military or defensive use. It suffered damage during the earthquake of 1688, which made it unusable and the church, after being deconsecrated, was used as a farmhouse.

In 1974 the Province of Benevento bought the complex and after the restoration of the church which took place thanks to the cooperation of the Archaeological Superintendence, the Province of Benevento and the capital Municipality, on December 8, 2004 the “Museo dell’Arco”, the Arch of Trajan museum, was inaugurated inside the former church. Through a multimedia video it aims to report the military exploits and the program of the Emperor Trajan represented in the reliefs that adorn the victory arch named after him.

Inside the monumental complex you can enjoy, free of charge, a guided tour of the archaeological park, the former early medieval church, the “Museo dell’Arco“, as well as informative material in English.

Download the brochure

• Telephone: CUP (booking centre) 345 7542984
• Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday from 9:00 to 19:00 – closed on Mondays

How to reach the Complex of Sant’Ilario

It was built in 114 AD to celebrate the extension of the Appian Way from Benevento to Brindisi and to exalt the rule of Trajan, The “Optimus Princeps”

The bas-relief with whitch it is decoreted recounts a series of deeds of the Emperor Trajan: boh milotary conquestes (on one side) and civil works (on the other one).

The largest Roman arch after that of Titus, it was given the name Port’Aurea when it was incorporated into the city walls in the Middle Ages and became yìthe main entrance to the city.

Address: Via Traiano

How to reach the Traian Arch

How to reach the Traian Arch

The great theatre, of which the cavea and the first tier survives, was commissionated by Emperor Hadrian.
It originally had a capacity of 10.000 spectators and comic, tragic and farcical performances were held there.
A building of great importance in Roman cities, it testifies to Benevento’s prestige in the geography of the Empire

Address: Pontius Telesino Quare
Opening times: Monday to Sunday from9 am to 5 pm
Tickets: over 25, 2.00 – from18 to 25, € .00 – under 18 free admission

How to reach the Roman Theatre

The Museum of Agricultural Technology and Work is an exhibition of vintage agricultural machinery as well as an educational and multimedia laboratory that combines a technical reading of the stages of the evolution of engines and mechanical devices in rural areas with the assessment of the social, economic and cultural transformations that tractors have determined in the lives of all of us.

A space that looks at the recent past and the cultural identity of the Samnium territory, it is located in the area of Piano Cappelle and consists of a real centre of cultural promotion of the history of agriculture and agrarian technologies. It collects, distributed in ten pavilions, tractors and agricultural machines, coming from all over the world, above all rare specimens in perfect state of conservation. Here you can find a series of installations that reconstruct the environment of the traditional agricultural society, a system of plasma screens with educational footages and the magic multimedia “quadrisfera” that tells, in a complex system of video and mirrors, the evolution of the rural landscape over time.

In the guided tour the apparently cold agricultural machine comes to life, surrounded by figures of farm workers and masters. The setting up, that follows the stages of the introduction of the technique in the tiring work of the fields, is the scenery for a series of stories about traditional life and for the recovery of agricultural techniques and products disappeared or at risk of disappearing. The structure, which has a large outdoor theatre can hold and arrange shows and other events as well.

• Open from Tuesday to Sunday except December 25th and January 1st and Easter day
• Telephone: 0824 303165 – CUP (booking centre) 345 7542984

How to reach the Musa

Find your Travel Guide

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Whether you are interested in a cultural walk, a historical tour or an immersive experience, our guides will accompany you on each stage, revealing curiosities and stories that only a true local expert knows.
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BookShop / Infopoint

Address: Piazza Santa Sofia (Adjacent Church) – 82100 Benevento.

How to reach the BookShop/Infopoint

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