Museo Lapidario Maffeiano

Museo Lapidario Maffeiano: Scipione Maffei’s museum of inscriptions

Scipione Maffei, a Veronese scholar who lived from 1675 to 1755, spent more than 30 years gathering the hundreds of inscriptions that fill the Museo Lapidario Maffeiano, and he had the architect and painter Alessandro Pompei build them a home. He named it the Museum Veronense, the city’s museum, and made it public because he believed that what is useful to the public should belong to the public, and so that private collections wouldn’t be broken up and lost.

It stands at Piazza Bra 28, on the same square as the Arena, and from Porta Nuova station you can walk there or take an ATV city bus to the Piazza Bra stop. The museum’s own text calls it one of the oldest public museums in Europe; travellers on the Grand Tour made it a fixed stop, and the German writer Goethe came in September 1786.

Maffeiano tickets: online or at the Arena’s ticket office

The Maffeiano has no ticket office. You buy your ticket online at verona.coopculture.it, which sells tickets for all of Verona’s civic museums, or at the nearest civic ticket offices, the Arena’s and Castelvecchio’s, and booking isn’t required.

With a VeronaCard, the missing ticket office stops mattering: the card includes the museum, so there’s no ticket to fetch first.

The courtyard: Roman inscriptions and the milestones of the Via Postumia

Under the colonnade of the courtyard stand the Latin inscriptions, from Verona and its territory and from as far as Istria and Dalmatia, along with a few from Rome. Look for the milestones of the Via Postumia, which the museum describes as the oldest and most important Roman road in northern Italy.

One stone ties the museum to its neighbour: the gravestone of a Veronese gladiator with a long career behind him. A guide to the two together, in Italian, English and German, is on sale at the shops of the Arena and the Roman Theatre.

Upstairs: the Greek room and the will of Epikteta

On the first floor, Maffei’s Greek collection fills a room of its own: about a hundred inscriptions from the 5th century BC to the 5th century AD, mostly from Asia Minor, the Cyclades, Attica and the Peloponnese. The star piece is the Testament of Epikteta, a will carved in stone on Thera at the end of the 3rd century BC and one of the longest Greek inscriptions known. The room also has the gravestone of Gaios Silios Bathyllos, from Attica in the 1st century AD; Goethe was struck by the gaze of its figures.

The second floor turns to Roman sculpture, with a 1st-century statue of the mythical hunter Meleager and the memorial of a centurion, Quintus Sertorius Festus. There are Etruscan funerary urns in clay from Chiusi, alabaster from Volterra and travertine from Perugia, and gravestones of the ancient Veneti, while more Roman pieces fill the basement. Maffei himself is in the museum too, in a bust by Giuseppe Antonio Schiavi of 1727-28.

Maffeiano opening hours, steps and the lift

The courtyard is accessible to visitors with mobility difficulties who come with someone, but the colonnade and the porch have steps. A lift serves the rooms inside, though you reach it up one step at the entrance. There’s no cloakroom, food and drink stay outside, and small dogs come in a carrier.

Two Saturdays, 14 November and 12 December, bring a free guided visit of the collections at 11:00. Only the entry is paid, and you reserve on 045 8036353 or 045 597140, or by email at museiverona@spazioaster.it.

Not to be confused with Palazzo Maffei on Piazza delle Erbe

Verona has a second Maffei museum, and the two are easy to mix up. Palazzo Maffei Casa Museo, at Piazza delle Erbe 38, is a house museum with the collection of Luigi Carlon, more than 850 works including Hokusai’s Great Wave. It charges €15, or €9 with a VeronaCard, and it closes on Tuesdays.