Travel Italy Exploring Florence About The Museo Archeologico in Piazza Santissima Annunziata

Just off the square is the Museo Archeologico , Via della Colonna 38 (Mon 4-7pm, Tues & Thurs 8.30am-7pm, Wed & Fri-Sun 8.30am-2pm; summer Sat also 9pm-midnight; €4.13). This is the pre-eminent collection of its kind in northern Italy, though modernization is perpetually in progress, and they are still rectifying damage caused by the flood of 1966. Its special strength is its Etruscan finds. On the ground floor, pride of place goes to the François Vase , an Attic bowl from the sixth century BC. It's been restored twice - once after its discovery in Chiusi in 1845, and again after a butter-fingered member of staff converted it into a 638-piece jigsaw in 1900. The two upper floors are arranged with variable clarity. Outstanding among the Roman pieces is the nude known as the Idolino , probably a copy of a fifth-century BC original. The Greek head of a horse, in the same room, once adorned the garden of the Palazzo Medici, where it was studied by Donatello and Verrocchio. In the long gallery stand the Arringatore (Orator), the only known Etruscan large bronze from the Hellenistic period; and a Chimera , a bizarre triple-headed bronze monster of the fifth century BC discovered at Arezzo and much admired by Cosimo I's retinue of Mannerist artists.

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