Representing the history of the city and territory of Oristano, it safeguards a precious heritage. The Antiquarium Arborense museum was founded in 1938 as the third museum in Sardinia, thanks to the Oristano municipality’s acquisition of the collection owned by Efisio Pischedda, a lawyer who, combining forensic activities with a passion for archaeology, pieced together the largest private collection on the island in the 19th century, composed of finds from Tharros and the Sinis peninsula.

Renovated in 2016 and equipped with a multi-touch table and wall plus interactive 3D models, the museum conserves a legacy consisting of some ten thousand cultural and archaeological assets, consisting not only of the Pischedda collection, but also of those of Carta, Sanna Delogu, Pau, Cominacini-Boy and D’Urso-Vitiello. The exhibition is housed in the elegant and neoclassical Palazzo Parpaglia, which has housed the Antiquarium since 1992, named after its first curator, Giuseppe Pau. The finds, which cover a chronological arc from prehistory to the Middle Ages, are flanked by two reconstructive models, the Tharros of late Roman times (4th century AD) and Oristano in the era of the Judicatures (14th century), when the capital of the Giudicato of Arborea was the protagonist of the island’s history.