Shapes and colours from pre-Roman Italy. Canosa di Puglia

The exhibition Forms and colours from pre-Roman Italy. Canosa di Puglia, open at Castel Sant’Angelo, curated by Massimo Osanna and Luca Mercuri, illustrates an important moment in the history of ancient Italy, prior to the unification that followed the conquests of Rome focusing on the Dauni, a population that inhabited the northern area of ​​present-day Puglia and part of Basilicata, belonging to the pre-Roman Italy and a lesser-known era of ancient history.

The exhibits on display – armour, ceramics, jewellery and ornaments – tell the story of Canosa, one of the most important centres in the area where, between the 4th and 2nd centuries BC, the so-called Princes, prominent figures of the Daunian elite, were buried in hypogea (family chamber tombs dug into the local tuff) with a rich funerary set, which underlined the social status of the deceased to the community. Among the exhibits, the polychrome and plastic vases stand out – with a particular intense pink colour – enriched with applied figurines, which represent an original production of the Canosa workshops of the time, as well as two wonderful objects such as the gold and precious stone diadem, decorated with flowers, berries and moveable leaves, and a gold leaf sceptre, kept in the National Archaeological Museum of Taranto, which originally belonged to a Canosa woman, certainly of royal rank.

Each of these precious objects, such as the armour, a symbol of power and prestige, which evokes the role of warriors in social dynamics, or the ceramics painted with geometric or figurative motifs that tell us of a refined aesthetic and a culture that intertwined, harmonising them, the sacred elements with the profane ones, invites visitors to rediscover the daily life of the ancient Dauni.

The materials on display come from the deposits and collections of some of the main museums in Puglia; the exhibition also features finds recovered during operations to combat the clandestine trade in cultural goods conducted by the Carabinieri Command of the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit.

This exhibition is part of the program for the enhancement and promotion of Italian cultural heritage abroad called The Tale of Beauty, the result of the joint collaboration between the General Directorate of Museums of the Ministry of Culture (MiC) and the General Directorate of Public and Cultural Diplomacy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI), a network of which the Italian Cultural Institutes are part.

Photo credits: Maximiliano Massaroni