Sant'Agata, Archaeological museum in Spoleto, Italy

Sant'Agata is the monumental complex in Spoleto comprising the former Benedictine monastery, the Romanesque church of Sant'Agata and the Roman theatre. The monastery, founded in 1396, incorporates the Corvi palace tower, and its 16th-century cloister has two orders of nine arches on octagonal terracotta pillars. The national archaeological museum, open since 1985, occupies the monastery and displays finds from the 4th millennium BC to the 4th century AD.

The monastery was founded in 1396 by Benedictine nuns from San Paolo "inter vineas", who moved inside Spoleto's walls into buildings inherited from the Corvi family. The nuns occupied the old tower until 1800, when they moved to Sant'Ansano. In the 16th century they built the two-order cloister with nine arches on octagonal terracotta piers. From 1870 to 1954 the complex served as a judicial prison.

The name Sant'Agata comes from the church beside the former monastery, now a deconsecrated single-nave hall used for exhibitions and concerts. In the monastery refectory, a sinopia of the Last Supper and Christ's prayer in Gethsemane, painted by an anonymous Spoletan artist in 1558, covers the back wall. Four bas-reliefs of crows, the emblem of the Corvi family, are carved at the corners of the old palace walls.

The museum occupies four levels of the former monastery, but the exhibition route runs through the first and third floors and ends at the Roman theatre. Access between floors is by stairs, so allow time for the climb. The complex lies between via di Sant'Agata and via delle Terme, in Spoleto's archaeological zone.

The collection includes limestone blocks bearing the Lex Spoletina inscription, an archaic Latin text that records rules for cutting wood in Jupiter's sacred forest in the pre-Roman era. This find is rare evidence of written laws from that period.