Museo del Palazzo dei Consoli
The former home of the town government is a solidly Gothic-looking palace, almost improbably so, with crenellations, a tower, and an imposing stone staircase that seems to demand you climb up from Piazza Grande. The main hall, where the medieval commune met, houses the sleep-inducing town museum, where one prize stands out amid the old coins and bits of pottery. The seven Eugubine Tables, inscribed on bronze from 200 to 70 b.c., provide the only existing record of the Umbri language transposed in Etruscan and Latin letters, ancient Umbria’s Rosetta Stone. The tablets mainly detail the finer points of animal sacrifice and divination through watching the flight patterns of birds. A local farmer turned up the tablets while he was plowing his fields in 1444, and city officials convinced him to sell them for 2 years’ worth of grazing rights. In your explorations be sure to find the secret corridor that leads from the back of the ceramics room to the Pinacoteca upstairs, via the medieval toilets.
The former home of the town government is a solidly Gothic-looking palace, almost improbably so, with crenellations, a tower, and an imposing stone staircase that seems to demand you climb up from Piazza Grande. The main hall, where the medieval commune met, houses the sleep-inducing town museum, where one prize stands out amid the old coins and bits of pottery. The seven Eugubine Tables, inscribed on bronze from 200 to 70 b.c., provide the only existing record of the Umbri language transposed in Etruscan and Latin letters, ancient Umbria’s Rosetta Stone. The tablets mainly detail the finer points of animal sacrifice and divination through watching the flight patterns of birds. A local farmer turned up the tablets while he was plowing his fields in 1444, and city officials convinced him to sell them for 2 years’ worth of grazing rights. In your explorations be sure to find the secret corridor that leads from the back of the ceramics room to the Pinacoteca upstairs, via the medieval toilets.
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