On 16 August 1972 Stefano Mariottini was free-diving for fish 230 metres off the coast of Riace Marina when, eight metres down, he saw an arm sticking out of the sand. It belonged to one of two bronze warriors, cast in Greece around 460 and 430 BC and preserved whole: the great Greek bronzes of the classical age that have survived intact can be counted on one hand. The Carabinieri diving unit raised them with a balloon inflated from scuba tanks, statue B on 21 August and statue A the following day.
What to see
The two figures measure 198 and 197 centimetres and they are not bronze alone: silver for warrior A's teeth and for the eyelashes of both, ivory and calcite for the whites of the eyes, copper for the lips and the nipples. Warrior B wears a leather cap, the kynê, under his Corinthian helmet; his right arm and left forearm come from a different casting and were welded on later, still in antiquity, to repair damage suffered when the statue was already on display.
There is no agreement on who made them and no attribution stands on its own: among the readings still argued over is the one that identifies the pair as Polynices and Eteocles and brings in Pythagoras of Rhegion. After the recovery the statues spent five years in the restoration centre in Florence, where radiographs revealed the ancient repairs and the thinness of the metal; they came back here in December 2013, after a final campaign at Palazzo Campanella. The rest of the museum is no side dish: the pinakes of Locri Epizephyrii, the marble Dioscuri, the Kouros of Rhegion and the two bronze heads from Porticello, the Philosopher and the so-called Basel head.
Visiting
The museum occupies Palazzo Piacentini on piazza De Nava, built to Marcello Piacentini's design between 1932 and 1941 and fully reopened on 30 April 2016 after years of works. The route runs over four levels and the Bronzes come at the end, in a climate-controlled room: humidity between 40 and 50 per cent, temperature between 21 and 23 degrees. You go in in small groups through a filter room, with a few minutes of waiting in front of the glass doors. The museum is closed on Mondays and two hours is the minimum for seeing it all without rushing.
Our editors' tip
Do not run to the room of the Bronzes as soon as you are through the door: the route is built to reach them at the end, and the pinakes of Locri explain the world those two warriors came from. Once inside, take the time to walk round both statues: the back of warrior A, with its worked musculature, is the side almost nobody looks at and the best one. On the way out, in the late afternoon, we go down to the lungomare Falcomatà: the Strait and the Sicilian coast close the day better than any souvenir.
