Archaeological Museum of Bologna

The museum’s Numismatic Collection includes over 100,000 antique coins, medals, tesserae, tokens, coin stamps and seals; it is one of the museum’s most important holdings and one of the most significant numismatic collections of the country.
Among the most significant sections is the sizeable nucleus of Roman coins of the republican and imperial periods, and the collection of coins from Italian mints. The collection of medals too is significant in terms of the quality and rarity of the examples, and is especially strong on papal medals.
The Numismatic Collection is based on two principal holdings: the University collection and the municipal one, merged into a single group with the opening of the museum in 1881; at the time, it counted about 84,000 items. During the course of the 20th century, some donations and new acquisitions enriched the collection, which in 2003 expanded further with the Tabarroni collection, recently donated to the museum. Most of the collection is not on public display but conserved in storage, entirely catalogued and digitalised. An intresting sampling of Roman coins (aurei from the imperial period) is visible in the section dedicated to the Roman Collection