The Archaeological Museum is just across the Popular Arts Museum. The building was also designed for the 1929 exhibition and the façade is a mixture of baroque and neoclassic architecture.
Its collection goes from prehistory to the 15th century. This museum has the most extensive collection of Roman works of art, collected from all of the province. There is a huge collection of Roman marble statues and many beautiful floor mosaics. The collection is one of the biggest in Spain. The museum showed marble statues of the emperors Augustus and Hadrian. They had life masks when the emperors died. The emperors were not handsome, yet when the marble statues were made, they appeared handsome, like gods. So this was their propaganda at that time. There is an important marble sculpture of Venus Italica, which dates from the time of the Emperor Hadrian (117-138 A.D.). This was found in the theater of Italica, and the statue represents Anadiomene, the goddess from the sea.
Also of interest in the museum are recreations of Roman tombs. They were like big cabinets with open shelves. On top were life masks of plaster done when the people died. Below on the shelves were ceramic urns where the ashes of the dead were placed.
The basement has the Treasure of El Carambolo, discovered in 1958 in Seville. This consists of sixteen belts and helmets, two breast plates, two wide bracelets, and two pendants, all done in gold. They date from the 7th and 8th centuries. It is thought that they could come from the Tartessian culture, although this is still in debate.
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