Museum
Museo Lapidario Maffeiano
P.za Bra, 28, 37121 Verona VR
Eighteenth-century collection of ancient Roman inscriptions displayed along a courtyard portico by a scholar who wrote the book on spotting fakes.
This guide to the Museo Lapidario Maffeiano in Verona follows Scipione Maffei, the nobleman who spent thirty years from around 1716 rescuing nearly two hundred thirty Roman inscriptions from convents and demolished palaces to found one of Europe's first public museums. It traces his second obsession, born from Italy's flood of counterfeit Roman inscriptions, and the manual he wrote in Florence around 1721 laying out how to spot a forger's hand. Stand close to the wall he curated himself before you learn what scholars later found among his stones.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.