Museo Nazionale del Paleolitico

Museum displaying human remains and tools from one of Europe's oldest known settlements

Address Villa comunale, Isernia
Admission €3
Opening Hours Tue–Sun 08:00–20:00; closed Mon

The National Palaeolithic Museum displays findings from the La Pineta archaeological site just outside town, where excavations since 1979 have uncovered one of the earliest known human settlements in Europe, dated to approximately 700,000 years ago. Exhibits include stone tools, animal bones (including rhinoceros, bear, and hippopotamus), and the reconstructed evidence of camp activities. The site dates to a warmer interglacial period when the Italian peninsula had a very different fauna.

The museum is small but well-presented, and the timeline it represents is genuinely staggering — 700,000 years ago, the same ridge where the modern city now stands was a temporary campsite for early humans who would have been as distant from us in time as we are from them. The excavations at La Pineta are still ongoing.

things to do museum
A story
In 1978, workers laying a sewer line outside Isernia cut through a layer of volcanic ash and exposed animal bones and stone tools at a depth of about 5 metres. Subsequent excavation revealed the site of La Pineta — a Palaeolithic encampment dated to approximately 700,000 years ago, among the earliest evidence of hominin presence in Europe. The inhabitants were probably Homo heidelbergensis.