For the centenary of the Buonconsiglio Museum, reunited finds from the princely tombs of Civezzano

From March 22 to October 2024 on the second floor of Castelvecchio in the Buonconsiglio Castle in Trent, Italy, the exhibition Con spada e croce. Longobards in Civezzano, curated by Annamaria Azzolini and Wolfgang Sölder and Veronica Barbacovi. What was found in Civezzano in the nineteenth century, when Trentino was part of the Habsburg Empire, is preserved at the Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck; what was found at the beginning of the following century and given to the imperial museum in Vienna has come to the Buonconsiglio Castle, after the establishment of the Trentino Museum, which took place precisely one hundred years ago. The exhibition thus aims to ideally unite the two museums, the Buonconsiglio in Trent and the Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck, precisely at a time when the one in Trent is celebrating the first centenary of its establishment and the Ferdinandeum has just concluded the celebrations of its second.

“It is an exhibition that writes for the first time the history of the Lombards in Trentino,” says Laura Dal Prà, director of the Castello del Buonconsiglio. Sword and Cross is intended to make the new art point, an undertaking made possible by the involvement of all the relevant research bodies, including the University of Trento and the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage. A research that starts from the discovery in Testona in the late 19th century of a necropolis whose finds were attributed to Germanic peoples, objects that served to identify those found in Civezzano in the “princely” tombs first in 1885 and then in 1902.

From the museum in Innsbruck, but also from the Royal Museums in Turin, come to Trentino, to the Buonconsiglio, extraordinary relics, extremely rare evidence of high manufactures of the first Germanic settlements in these territories. Each object tells a story. Starting with the sumptuous sarcophagus of the Prince of Civezzano, embellished with refined decorations of stylized animals in wrought iron. The gold jewelry of the Princess of Civezzano tells of Byzantine contacts, but also of Frankish ancestry. If “Civezzano style” is spoken of to describe the well-known Lombard motifs found on buckles and tips of silver and iron belts, in the exhibition swords, crosses, fibulae and gold jewelry are presented as they were once used, thanks to graphic reconstructions.

The preciousness and fine workmanship of these artifacts make it clear that the Lombards of Civezzano were an elite in the society of the time. The fact that the necropolis was located well away from the ancient parish church suggests that it was a nucleus of families of the Aryan religion.

“The investigations that this exhibition has stimulated have been directed at investigating large-scale issues: from the origin of the raw materials used to the spread of this culture in time and space, to the DNA analysis of human remains,” emphasize Annamaria Azzolini, one of the curators of the exhibition. “To offer the public and scholars, along with the thrill of admiring artifacts that are truly unique in terms of history and beauty, information that allows us to rewrite a history that until now has not been fully revealed.”

Image: Pair of gold earrings with pearl and amethyst from Lombard necropolis of Castel Tervana (Civezzano, 7th century AD; Trento, Buonconsiglio Castle)

For the centenary of the Buonconsiglio Museum, reunited finds from the princely tombs of Civezzano

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