Volterra | Eco-Museum of Alabaster

The Eco-Museum of alabaster  is an environmental route that leads from the museum points of Castellina Marittima and Santa Luce to Volterra, the centre of its production and trade.

The exhibition point, set up in the medieval Minucci tower-house inside the Art Gallery (the  Pinacoteca) is an original “Museum of Commercial Archaeology” that shows the entire history from the Etruscans to the present day: the finding and the quality of the stone, the styles to the models used by the sculptors, the merchants who spread knowledge of alabaster throughout the world in the 19th century, producing a positive impact on the city and the territory.

The exhibition is also an important part of an integrated itinerary involving other important Volterran institutions linked to alabaster, such as the Etruscan Museum, an inexhaustible mine of knowledge about production in the Etruscan period, and Palazzo Viti, the historic home of the merchant Giuseppe Viti, which offers an extraordinary insight into one of Volterra’s most important and richest families.