New Provincial Museum of Sannio, Archaeological museum in Palazzo Mazzarotta, Campobasso, Italy.
The National Archaeological Museum of Campobasso, formerly the Sannitic Museum, occupies the 16th-century Palazzo Mazzarotta in the city's historic centre. Its rooms display finds from ancient Samnium, corresponding to present-day Molise, ranging from prehistory to the early Middle Ages, with a strong Roman-era presence. The older collection follows Antonio Sogliano's 1889 typological arrangement into four groups: people, house, activities and cults.
Founded in 1881 as the Museo provinciale sannitico, the museum opened alongside the provincial library "Pasquale Albino" in the Palazzo della Prefettura. Until the 1990s it moved several times, always sharing premises with the library, and losses and thefts occurred during transfers, especially in World War II. After about twenty years of closure it reopened in 1995 in the sixteenth-century Palazzo Mazzarotta.
The museum displays objects from burials, settlements, and sacred sites that reveal how communities organized their daily routines across different eras. Visitors can see tools, pottery, and household items that show the practical skills and traditions of people who lived in this region long ago.
The museum occupies the sixteenth-century Palazzo Mazzarotta in Campobasso's historic centre, where it reopened in 1995 after some twenty years of closure. Some rooms are set up for educational activities, and newer exhibition rooms have been added for recent archaeological finds. The collection spans the Prehistoric period to the early Middle Ages.
The museum's first displays were arranged in 1889 by the archaeologist Antonio Sogliano, who catalogued the finds by type and grouped them under four headings: people, the house, activities and cults. That typological order is still followed for the material he recorded.
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