The Archaeological Museum in Naxos, March 2005

The [archaeological] museum [in Giardini-Naxos, Sicily] is next to the ancient Greek town area. Open from 9am up to an hour before sunset.

The Museum is close to Capo Schisò and the modern harbour of Giardini Naxos, on the border with the archaeological area of the ancient town of Naxos, which can also be reached from the museum itself, through an exhibition route, which partly following an important road of the 5th c. BC, takes you up to the western side of the walls.

The museum is divided into three buildings, two of which are dedicated to the exhibition. Building "A" was constructed in the 70s when the museum was founded, and building "B", the embattled tower of the Bourbon blockhouse, whose large pieces of walls still stand.

The museum illustrates the history of the Greek colony of Naxos, also considering the prehistorical evidences which prove the human presence in the site from the Neolithic up to the arrival of the Greeks, as well as the findings within the territory (Cocolonazzo di Mola, Monaci cave, Fiumedenisi, Malvagna).

Naxos was founded in 734 BC by the Calcidians, who had sailed from the Greek island of Eubea led by Theocles.

The town, developed along the route which boats coming from Eubea followed to reach Ischia to trade with the Etruscans, was the heart of the Calcidian spread in Sicily, and from here Theocles moved to found Leontinoi and Katane.

The history of the town, marked by the rivalry with the powerful Siracusa, was quite short and it disappeared in three centuries, when it was destroyed by Dionysius of Siracusa in 403 BC.

The collections are mostly composed of finds from the excavations which have been carried since 1953 in the site of the ancient colony. A few materials found at the turn of the century come from the Archaelogical Museums of Palermo and Siracusa, and very recently, from Heildeberg University Museum which receded a fragment of arula with sphinxes, bought in 1902 by F. von Duhn in Taormina and perfectly reconnected to the one exhibited in Naxos.

The large number of handmade pottery is evidence of the different phases of life in the town, its commercial relations and its material culture. The figured and architectural terracottas, the antefixes with Silenian masks attest the thriving of a sacred monumental architecture at the beginning of the 6th c., as well as the presence of lively workshops which produced terracotta objects. Various artefacts are evidence of settlements along the coast dated back to the Byzantine period.

Other items found in this area are also displayed, such as the beautiful bronze helmet made in Moio, in the Alcantara Valley, during the Hellenistic period. Part of the exhibition is dedicated to underwater findings, such as several anchor stocks and some transport amphoras.

The arrangement follows chronological criteria

Ground floor
- The prehistoric period
- Items found at the turn of the last century
- The oldest phase of the colonial settlement: late-geometrical ceramic materials of Corinthian and Eubeian-cicladian productions, as well as imitations; outfits found in the northern necropolis; archaic transport amphoras of different production, all reutilized as graves

First floor
- Coins dated back to the 5th c. BC from the northern district of the town
- The sacred areas of the town: architectural covers and antefixes with Silenian masks
- The archaic and classic settlement, the necropoli of the 5th c. BC, and those of the Hellenistic period (3rd c. BC)

Embattled tower of the Bourbon blockhouse
- Underwater finds (anchor stocks, millstones, amphoras)

Text and more information about individual artifacts from: www.regione.sicilia.it/beniculturali/dirbenicult/musei/mu...