The Museo Nazionale di Altino (also known as MANA — the National Archaeological Museum of Altino) occupies a purpose-built building beside the archaeological site of ancient Altinum, one of the most important Roman cities of northeast Italy before its destruction in the 5th century. The museum houses a remarkable collection of finds from the city: mosaics, inscribed stone funerary monuments, bronzes, glass, amphorae, and everyday domestic objects from a prosperous Roman port town that sat at the edge of the lagoon.
The funerary monuments are particularly striking — elaborately carved stone markers from the necropolis outside the city walls, many with portraits and inscriptions that give the dead individual faces and names across two millennia. The museum also shows aerial photographs of the site, which reveal the outline of Altinum's streets and buildings visible as crop marks in the surrounding farmland. The city was never rebuilt after its abandonment, leaving its plan intact beneath the fields. The museum is small but thoughtfully curated, and the aerial views of the invisible city beneath the fields are genuinely arresting.