Fragment of solid slab transenna - Farsetti's Lapidary Room

myminifactory

In the first half of the XIX century, the Lapidary Room was reorganised in the same place using the same four walls previously used in the seventeen hundreds. This second display is also known to us through some drawings of the period. A comparison of the drawings makes it clear that in the eighteen hundreds 85 pieces were again displayed but of these only seventy-three are recognisable without any shadow of doubt as items from the first lapidary. During the XX century the collection was presented in new displays. The first was after the restoration of the Archiepiscopal Capel and the oldest part of the episcope, promoted by the Superintendent of Historic Buildings of Ravenna under the supervision of Giuseppe Gerola and opened in 1932. The early collection was expanded with numerous pieces from the cathedral, religious buildings of the diocese and from archaeological excavations in the city surrounding areas. In the second half of the XX century and thanks to the initiative of Monsignor Mario Mazzotti, superintendent at the Archiepiscopal Archive and Museum, the museum was revitalised with the addition of some new materials in the course of a general restoration of the various buildings annexed to the cathedral between 1955 and 1969. On that occasion the collection reached the dimensions with which it has come down to us. The new displays retained the original collection of Farsetti which was concentrated in the two entrance halls of the museum but the layout is based on the chronological periods of the exhibits. This room contains the pieces belonging to Farsetti's Lapidary which came from the demolition of the cathedral and to which the transennae recovered from the floor ofthe cathedral at the end of the XIX century have been added. The exhibits cover a chronological period that extends from antiquity to the middle of the Middle Ages.