We recommend the new book by the Director of the Museum, Prof. Maurizio Harari, published by Il Mulino.

Where should anyone in Italy go to retrace the places and find the images of the fabulous wandering of Ulysses? The Homeric hero visited many places on the peninsula. He moored his ships in the Gulf of Gaeta and came across the terrible Lestrigoni, anthropophagous giants, near Formia; near Terracina, the ancient Anxur, his friend Elpenore is said to be buried, and the island of Eea was identified with the promontory of Mount Circeo: here he imagined the residence of the Sorceress Circe, with whom he lived a year of love. And the monstrous Scylla and Charybdis are nothing but the mythological transposition of the dangers of the Strait of Messina. Ulysses and his men encountered the Cyclops and were taken prisoner by Polyphemus at the foot of Mount Etna. Famous episodes, immortalised since antiquity in frescoes, mosaics and sculptures. The journey ends in Cortona, where Ulysses, having left Ithaca again after his perilous return, would finally find burial.

Maurizio Harari directs the Department of Humanistic Studies at the University of Pavia, where he teaches Etruscology and Italic Archaeology. He has conducted excavation campaigns in Etruscan sites in the Upper Adriatic, inland from Adria and in Verucchio. His numerous publications include “Gli Etruschi del Po” (Cardano, 2000) and “Icone del mondo antico. A seminar on the history of images” (L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2009).