The Museum was founded in 1817 by Michele della Torre Valsassina, an eclectic scholar and passionate about archeology, to welcome and make immediately available to fellow citizens the finds unearthed in the excavation campaigns conducted in Cividale and in the territory, with grants from the Emperor of Austria Francis I.

Over the course of its two centuries of history, the Museum has also been enriched with important works of sacred and profane goldsmiths from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a historical library that collects about 8000 printed volumes between the 15th and 19th centuries, and of a rich Codex Collection that collects manuscripts between the fifth and seventeenth centuries, including the ancient Evangeliary of San Marco, which documents the origin of the Chapter, and richly illuminated examples such as the psalters of Egberto and Santa Elisabetta.

Today the Museum is housed in the Palazzo dei Provveditori Veneti, built in the late sixteenth century on a project by Andrea Palladio: on the ground floor there is the lapidary section with finds dating from the Roman age to the Renaissance period, which allow the visitor to follow the evolution and the history of the city from the municipium of Forum Iulii , to the Civitas Austriae of patriarchal splendor up to the Venetian domination.

The visit continues on the main floor where, after a section dedicated to the exceptional decorative bronze complexes from the forum of Iulium Carnicum (Zuglio), the Lombard civilization finds space and ample breath, with the splendid material testimonies found in the rich necropolis of Cividale and in other locations of the Lombard Duchy of Friuli, which make the Museum a point of reference among those dedicated to the early Middle Ages.

Of particular note among the many treasures is the exhibition of the necropolis of San Mauro in the hall, where the ten burials reconstructed on the basis of excavation data allow visitors to directly appreciate the Lombard funeral rituals; the exceptional privileged burial of "Gisulfo", the only one of the "princely" burials of the Lombard period that has survived intact in Italy, and the splendid collection of Lombard golds of the CRUP Foundation, second only to that of the British Museum.