Aeolian Archaeological Museum

The Museo Archeologico Regionale Eoliano, spread over several buildings inside the castle walls, is the best small archaeological museum in southern Italy and the single best reason to visit Lipari. Its strength is the prehistoric and Greek collections: obsidian tools from Neolithic Lipari (the obsidian trade made the island rich), Bronze Age pottery, an exceptional collection of Greek and Roman theatrical masks, and a complete reconstructed sea-trade-route gallery of shipwreck finds.

Allow at least two hours; longer if you read the labels. The labels are mostly in Italian, with patchy English. The site is hilly and involves stairs between buildings.

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A story
The museum's collection of nearly life-size terracotta theatrical masks — found in tombs on the island and dating to between the 4th and 2nd centuries BC — is the largest and finest of its kind in the world. The masks were buried with the dead as a reference to theatre's role in the cult of Dionysus, the god of wine and rebirth.

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