In Poggibonsi, a Carolingian village rebuilt at full scale

On the hill of Poggio Imperiale, in the province of Siena, a museum opens that cannot be visited with the eyes alone. It is the Archeodromo di Poggibonsi, presented as Italy’s largest open-air archaeological museum entirely dedicated to the Early Middle Ages: a 9th-10th century Carolingian village rebuilt at full scale, not evoked through panels and display cases but raised again where it was found.

The site originates from excavations carried out by the University of Siena on the same hill, which over the years have brought to light traces of an early medieval settlement: huts, production structures, the layout of an inhabited space from the Carolingian age. From those excavations the project moved on to physical reconstruction, turning an archaeological dig into a place the public can walk through, moving among the same geometries that archaeologists documented in the ground.

The official inauguration is set for Saturday, October 24, at 3 p.m. The Councillor for Culture of the Municipality of Poggibonsi, Cristina Manetti, described the operation as “an example of diffuse culture that makes history alive and accessible”. The definition captures the point of the project: not a traditional museum that safeguards artifacts, but a park that restores an entire inhabited landscape, designed to be walked through rather than observed from a distance.

The choice to reconstruct a Carolingian settlement, rather than one of the Roman or Etruscan excavations on which Italian archaeology usually concentrates public attention, signals a growing interest in a period long considered minor in popular narratives: the centuries following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, when the forms of dwelling and agricultural work reorganized on a local scale. Poggibonsi, with its hill excavated for decades, thus becomes a case study in how the Early Middle Ages can be communicated without textual mediation, through the direct reconstruction of lived space.

The news currently comes from a single source — the joint press release of the Municipality of Poggibonsi and the University of Siena, picked up by gonews.it — and there is at present no independent confirmation of the timeline of the inauguration or the details of the reconstruction. The Carolingian village thus opens on Saturday, with an extent and reconstructive faithfulness that can be verified once it is first opened to the public.