In the beginning there was a domestic museum, created and curated by a lawyer passionate about archeology and the history of his land.
Giuseppe Zigarelli cared about his collection so much that he decided to donate it to the Municipality of Avellino. Those materials formed the first nucleus of the museum inaugurated on October 28, 1934, under the supervision of the historian Salvatore Pescatori. It took several decades to arrive at the modern Irpino Museum, until 1965, when the new archaeological section of the museum was set up in the recently completed Palazzo della Cultura.
The result of a competition of ideas launched in 1951, the new building was built in a neo-rationalist style from the winning project by architect Francesco Fariello. The place, in the centre of Avellino, corresponded to the Bourbon botanical garden of which the garden around the building remains. The entire first floor was destined to the archaeological collections: that of Zigarelli with finds coming largely from the upper Ofanto valley and those of the finds discovered in the excavation campaigns after the Second World War. The museum itinerary, ordered according to a historical-chronological criterion from Prehistory to the late Roman era, also takes into account the provenance by area. "A window on ancient Hirpinia" offers extensive documentation of the various phases of settlement in Irpinia in ancient times. There are the finds recovered in the excavations conducted in the Mirabella Eclano area, in the Ansanto Valley of Rocca San Felice and in the prehistoric station of the Stanza near Ariano Irpino. Of particular value and interest are the items from the sanctuary of Mefite, from the 7th century in the Valle d'Ansanto area near Rocca San Felice. The votive deposit found contained amber, bronze and gold objects, clay and wooden statuettes, weapons and coins. The main find is a Xoanon, a wooden statue recovered in the stream near the Mefite lake. Elongated body, hinted arms, triangular face and large open eyes, it is an Irpinian-Samnite man in his usual clothing. there is also the rich funerary equipment of the so-called "Tomb of the tribal chief". A considerable quantity of materials from the Roman era comes from Aeclanum: objects of daily use, architectural elements, coins, glass ceramic objects and the marble statues they embellished the thermal complex of the II AD. Among the testimonies received from Abellinum, a polychrome floor from the III-IV AD stands out. Noteworthy is the stone stele dedicated to the god Silvanus from the 1st century AD. by Oppius of Lioni.
On the upper floor of the Palazzo is the Crib Section: it houses a unique collection of 400 modern cribs or copies of ancient ones from all over the world. The itinerary is sealed off by a large Nativity scene with a thousand wooden characters dressed in San Leucio silk and a scenography made especially for this set-up. Other spaces include the Provincial Library Scipione and Giulio Capone, a newspaper library, a media library and the Network Centre.
Other fundamental parts of the Irpino Museum are located in the Monumental Complex of the Bourbon Prison. There is a part dedicated to archaeology, which completes the itinerary of the Palazzo della Cultura. There is the Lapidary, with numerous epigraphs of different contents and functions from the Roman age to the Angevin period. There is the Deposit that can be visited with archaeological finds not exhibited elsewhere and a rich collection of foreign weapons and weapons of the Royal Factory of Naples produced between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and a collection of particular objects from all over the world of the naval doctor Giuseppe Salomone.
On the second floor there is the Pinacoteca, built around the donation of the works of Achille Martelli to which works have been added that allow a journey through the artistic currents of the South in the 19th and 20th centuries, from naturalism to the most innovative currents.
The Risorgimento Section, reorganized on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy, is of great value. There are 380 memorabilia of all kinds from 1799 to 1861 on display, belonging to the different phases of the Neapolitan Republic, the French Decade, the uprisings of '20-'21 and '48, up to the unification of Italy to which Irpinia made a great contribution.
The Scientific Instruments Section with one hundred restored and functioning instruments, in use between the 19th and early 20th centuries in Irpinia schools.
Dulcis in fundo the new exhibition "Irpinia, Memory and Evolution", a journey through the different souls of the "middle ground" with objects representing the various stages of Irpinia's history and installations with great capacity to involve visitors.
