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The Archaeological Museum of Fara in Sabina: The Prince's Chariot and the Treasures of the Sabines
The Civic Archaeological Museum in Fara in Sabina, in the province of Rieti, preserves the remains of two Sabina cities: Cures, the city of the living, and Eretum, known to us primarily through its necropolis. Titus Tatius, the king who shared Rome with Romulus, came from Cures. Eretum stood further to the south, at the crossroads of the Via Salaria and Via Nomentana. Virgil mentions the latter in the Aeneid as one of the cities allied against Aeneas. The five rooms of Palazzo Brancaleoni, a Renaissance building in Piazza del Duomo, tell the story of a people who traded with Etruscans and Greeks.
The Prince's Chariot Returns Home
The most celebrated object on display is the Prince's Chariot of Eretum, a 7th-century BC ceremonial carriage decorated with sheets of embossed bronze, featuring lions, sphinxes, and birds with outstretched wings. It was stolen in the 1970s from Tomb XI at Colle del Forno, and ended up in a museum in Copenhagen. In 2016, the Carabinieri's Cultural Heritage Protection Unit brought it back to Italy. Since 2024, it has a room of its own.
Huts, Ceramics, and a Mysterious Boundary Stone
The museum also displays the reconstruction of a hut from Cures dating to the 8th century BC, with painted ceramics in the white-on-red style, and the Cippo di Cures (Cures Boundary Stone), with the only example of Sabina epigraphic writing found in the area. The itinerary concludes with the room devoted to Tomb XXXVI, which houses a terracotta throne.
