The Lovers of Valdaro are a pair of Neolithic skeletons, dating to around 5000–4000 BC, discovered in 2007 in a burial site near Mantua. The two young adults — a man and a woman, both around 18–25 years old at death — were interred facing each other in an embrace, their bodies pressed together. The discovery caused an immediate sensation: the pose was unlike any known Neolithic burial in Italy, and the image of two figures locked together across five millennia is genuinely moving.
They are now displayed in the National Archaeological Museum in the Palazzo Ducale. The skeletons are shown exactly as found — horizontal, still entwined — in a purpose-built display case. The museum also holds other finds from the Mantuan area's Bronze Age and Roman periods. If you only have time for one archaeological exhibit in Mantua, this is the one to see.