Museums in Umbria Perugia

There are more than 120 public and private museums, galleries and collections in Umbria.The most common type, for historical reasons, is the municipal collection, usually derived from the post-unification confiscations, with collections of historical-artistic exhibits, enlarged in some cases as a result of subsequent acquisitions and donations.

There are important museums of this type in Assisi, Bettona, Bevagna, Città di Castello, Deruta, Foligno, Gubbio, Gualdo Tadino, Montefalco, Montone, Nocera Umbra, Spello, Terni, Todi and Trevi, some of which are housed in buildings of great historical and architectural interest.

There are interesting archaeological museums in Amelia, Fossato di Vico and Orvieto.
As far as contemporary art is concerned, the most representative examples of such work can be found in the Burri Museum in Città di Castello and in the Pro Civitate Christiana Art Gallery in Assisi.
The state museums include the extremely important National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia, which houses significant exhibits, chiefly from the mediaeval and Renaissance periods, by artists such as Duccio di Boninsegna, Benozzo Gozzoli, Piero della Francesca, Pintoricchio and in particular Perugino, who is represented by a rich collection of paintings.Another important state museum is the National Archaeological Museum, which houses truly remarkable finds from the prehistoric age and from the Etruscan and Roman civilisations.

The region's cultural offer has been further enriched, in recent years, by other museums of various types:
- naturalistic museums
(Ornithological Museum in Pietralunga, Monte Cucco Historical-Naturalistic Museum in Costacciaro, Volcanology Museum in San Venanzo, Vegetable Palaeontology Centre on the fossil forest of Dunarobba in Avigliano, Tane del Diavolo Documentation Centre in Parrano, Geolab Laboratory of Earth Sciences in San Gemini, Umbrian Apennines Museum in Polino)
- museums with a historical vocation
(Documentation Centre on Hannibal and the battle of Trasimeno in Tuoro, Bartolomeo di Alviano and the Umbrian Condottieres Museum in Alviano, City Walls Museum in Perugia)
- thematic museums
(Ceramics Museum in Deruta, Wine Museum and Olive and Oil Museum in Torgiano, Fishing Museum in Magione, Oil Museum in Trevi, Umbrian Cloth Museum-Workshop in Città di Castello, Lace Museum at Tuoro-Isola Maggiore)
- demo-ethno-anthropological museum
(dedicated to "rural civilisation" in Alviano, in Città di Castello and in Campello sul Clitunno)

Since 1972, the year when jurisdiction relating to local museums was transferred from the State to the Regions, the regional policy with regard to museums was mainly addressed to their reconstitution, since at that time many of them were closed and in a state of substantial decline, and subsequently to their organisation into a network by means of the Regional Museum System, which entails the adoption of solutions of a managerial and administrative character designed to produce high-quality, uniform and shared solutions, and at the same time establishing economies of scale and skilled employment opportunities.

The action to promote and popularise the regional artistic patrimony has focused chiefly on the publication of a series known as the "Catalogo regionale dei beni culturali dell'Umbria", which has so far published 54 lavishly illustrated scientific catalogues on Umbria's cultural heritage. There is a further series entitles "Musei, città, luoghi dell'Umbria" (two titles have been published), covering museums, towns and places in Umbria, which is intended to be more popular in scope and more accessible to the general public, as well as a first series of illustrated leaflets dedicated to museums in the region.