The sienese Archaeological Museum was founded in 1933 as a Municipal Antiquarium by a great sienese scholar, Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, an extraordinarily passionate and sensitive director of the Academy’s Numismatic Museum from 1927, who emphasized the impelling necessity of uniting all of the available sienese archeological material. In fact, as early as the mid eighteenth century, in a climate that favored antiques, the first nucleus of an antique collection, primarily coins, small bronzes and seals was constituted in the Municipal Library, thanks to the donations of sienese scholars and aristocrats and was enriched during the nineteenth century by more donations as well as by material discovered in the city during the construction of a new road, Campansi. This material was transferred in 1856 to the Institute of Belle Arti. Contemporarily, the Academy of Physiocritics founded in 1691, already including a numismatic museum, was preparing a collection. During the second half of the eighteen hundreds the desire to create a museum for the local antiques initiated a request to move the material deposited at the Instituite of Belle Arti to the Physiocritic’s collection. When Bianchi Bandinelli was given the responsability of organizing the new Archaeological Museum, he was able to rely on some important existing collections, mostly originating from the sienese territory and Chiusi. In addition to the nucleus from the Municipal Collection and that of the Academy of Physiocritics, the new Municipal Antiquarium also housed the Mieli collection, donated to the Siena Municipality in 1882 by sir Leone Mieli (originally held at the Academy of Physiocritics). This collection included material gathered by Mieli on his properties in and around Pienza, vast areas containing etruscan tombs, settlements and votive depositions as well as the collection of Bargagli Petrucci di Sarteano, primarily constituted by fortuitous findings but also by material found in excavations on the family’s property near Sarteano and Casole d’Elsa completed between the last twenty-five years of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s, donated to the State in 1918 by the marquis Piero Bargagli Petrucci di Sarteano and later transferred to Siena. Among the objects in the collection,the material from the Cumere tomb is outstanding. Discovered in 1835, this tomb, with long dromos entries, contains thirteen small alabaster cinerary urns and a travertine sarcophagus. In 1951-52 two other important collections were encorporated into the museum, that of Chigi Zondadari and Bonci Casuccini. The first was constituted between the last quarter of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s by the marquis Bonaventura Chigi Zondadari, who was very careful about documenting antique discoveries and sensitive to the problems regarding the dispersion of archaeological patrimonies: the collection included material from the territory and objects, especially roman, acquired on the antique market. At the end of the 1800s it was considered to be one of the most important private collections. Upon the death of the marquis’ son, the marble statues from the collection were divided among the heirs and many vases, mostly greek, were dispersed on the antique market, while all the rest of the material, donated to the State, was passed on to the sienese Museum. The collection of Bonci Casuccini, put together at the beginning of the 1900s by Emilio Bonci Casuccini (the valuable collection of his great-grandfather Pietro, acquired by the Italian Realm in 1863, ended up in Palermo), included material primarily discovered on Chiusi territory and kept at the Marcianella villa, donated in 1952 to the State and transferred to Siena. During those years the Museum was greatly enriched by this material, especially by the funerary artifacts discovered during excavations conducted by the Tuscan Archaeological Superintendence on sienese territory. At the present, the museum is divided into two sections: the Antiquarium which includes various private collections (Bonci Casuccini, Bargagli Petrucci, Chigi Zondadari, Mieli, the Academy of Physiocritics, the Municipal Collection) and the topographical section which illustrates the important aspects of archeology in the sienese territory with particular emphasis on the discoveries within the city and surrounding areas, Chianti, upper Val d’Elsa and Murlo, where three terracotta slabs have been found once decorating the so-called second Regia. The collections, thus divided, summarize the historical memory of our archeological culture, offering a complex panorama of the development of the sienese territory. This memory is conserved by the buildings that host the artifacts, from the halls of the Palazzo Pubblico and the headquarters of the Sapienza, where the nucleus remained until 1988, to the suggestive rooms of Santa Maria della Scala and the Sant’Ansano alley, restored for this purpose within the Santa Maria complex.