The Pompeo Aria National Etruscan Museum in the ancient town of Marzabotto

Marzabotto is one of the most important Etruscan centres in Emilia-Romagna.

Excavations have uncovered an Etruscan town complete with residential insulae, acropolis and charming eastern necropolis.

Located inside the archaeological area, the museum contains a collection of grave goods excavated from the town's cemeteries, reconstructions of Etruscan houses with roofs, votive statues, and a famous Kouros head.

The Museum is named in memory of Count Pompeo Aria who followed the footsteps of his father Giuseppe to organize the earliest nucleus of the collection. The Museum houses artefacts from over a century and a half of excavations in the ancient Etruscan town of Kainua and its Necropolis.

The Museum’s four exhibition halls include a description of the general characteristics of the settlement along with the site’s captivating artefacts: attic vases, bronzes, stone and marble tomb markers, balsam containers in alabaster and glass paste; numerous bronze votive statues that depict the devout in the act of offering and prayer; architectural terracotta pieces from the Acropolis and from dwellings that help to imagine how the settlement’s constructions appeared when still standing.

This site is exceptional evidence of the Etruscan civilization mainly because of the extraordinary preservation of the village’s urban layout. The evidence of regularly spaced areas is a sign that there was a very precise urban plan.

An artefact from the temple dedicated to the God Tinia, a fragment of a vase has the name of the city, Kainua, written on the bottom. This Etruscan town was located on the Misano plain and overhanging hill called Misanello for nearly two centuries, from the mid-6th to mid-4th century BC. Its prosperity was interrupted by the Celtic invasion.

Immediately outside the northern and eastern town gates are the remains of two necropolises (the Eastern one is open to the public) featuring large bins in stone with various shaped tomb markers.