Museo Ostiense

The building is a sixteenth-century structure tied to the papal salt monopoly and known as the Casone del Sale from the fifteenth century. It was restored between 1865 and 1867 for Pius IX to serve as a museum, which is when the neoclassical facade was built; the Ostian collections had been displayed in the Castello di Giulio II until the 1930s. The museum was inaugurated on 2 November 1934 under the excavation director Guido Calza, extended in part in 1952 and redisplayed in 1962. Among the named exhibits are the Vittoria Alata from the attic of Porta Romana, the statue of Cartilio Poplicola, fragments of the Fasti Ostienses, the Mithras Tauroctonos from the Mitreo delle Terme del Mitra signed by the Athenian artist Kriton, the statue of Trajan from the Schola del Traiano, the herm of Themistocles, the statue of Iulia Procula and the Sarcofago delle Muse.