The Guido Sutermeister Civic Museum is an archaeological museum in Legnano, named after the archaeologist who wanted it founded. It was set up in 1929 thanks to Guido Sutermeister, who carried out assiduous archaeological research in the area between 1925 and 1964.
What to see
The collections have been enriched with material from the excavations of the Archaeological Superintendency of Lombardy and with private donations. The museum holds material from the town and the surrounding area, mostly between prehistory and the Lombard period, with particular reference to the Roman imperial age: the finds testify to the area's occupation since the Copper Age and to a settled civilisation since the Bronze Age. In the exhibition room, the hall of honour and the loggetta the Copper Age is represented by a single piece, a fragment of a bell-beaker vase of the Remedello culture of the third millennium BC, the oldest find made in the Legnano area; the Bronze Age by finds of the Canegrate culture, of the thirteenth century BC; then come the Golasecca culture and the La Tène culture, with the grave goods of the «Warrior of Pontevecchio», a soldier of the first century BC, and a very rich collection of the Roman period.
The portico houses the stone finds made in the area: altars and funerary steles, millstones, a burial in a stone chest, ossuaries and a lead anchor of Roman date, and late imperial sarcophagi. In the «studiolo» is the formerly private collection of Emilio Sala, with 57 finds between the ninth and third century BC, of the Greek civilisation of southern Italy, the Etruscan one and the pre-Roman civilisations of northern Italy, among them an Attic alabastron of the seventh century BC and a lekanis from Centuripe of the third century BC. In the tower room is the numismatic collection, with ancient coins, from ancient Greece to the Lombard period, and modern coins, from the Middle Ages to the Austrian Empire. The L-shaped complex dates from 1928, in brick, with a square turret and a five-arched portico with columns recovered from the Maniero Lampugnani, demolished in 1927.
Visiting
The museum is in Legnano, with its entrance on corso Garibaldi, in a small garden. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.
Our editors' tip
Inside is kept a terracotta corbel with a putto, saved from the demolition of the Maniero Lampugnani, with the year 1420 carved on it.
