Friday 10 November at 8.00 pm an extraordinary evening opening of the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia to announce to the public the opening of the exhibition “Etruscan thorn at Villa Giulia. A great port in the Mediterranean", third and final stage of the celebrations for the Centenary of the discovery of Spina, the most important Etruscan city in the Adriatic discovered in 1922 near Comacchio.

Until that date Spina was little more than a legend, lost over time despite various literary sources having testified to its greatness and fame which made it, between the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 3rd century BC, the most important Etruscan port on the 'Adriatic and one of the most influential in the entire pre-Roman Mediterranean.

Thanks to the start of the reclamation works in Valle Trebba and then to the excavations of Valle Pega, in the space of a few decades Spina finally returned to light with over four thousand mostly intact burials and one of the most important nuclei of imported ceramics in the world attica.

The celebrations of the hundred years since this extraordinary archaeological discovery began last year at the Museo del Delta Antico in Comacchio with the exhibition “Spina 100: from myth to discovery”, to continue at the National Archaeological Museum of Ferrara with the exhibition “ Etruscan thorn. A large port in the Mediterranean", and close in the extraordinary context of the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia with a multimedia exhibition itinerary, enriched by works from important Italian and foreign institutions which will tell the story of the exceptional scientific contribution that Spina's excavations have given to knowledge of the archeology and history of the Mediterranean and will aim to reconnect the threads of knowledge around the Etruscans and their cultural, commercial and social relations, broadening their gaze to the cities of Tyrrhenian Etruria.

Adriatic and Tyrrhenian Sea, Spina and Pyrgi, strategic ports that intertwine their stories with the debated origins of the Etruscans. Mythical imagery and shared history therefore come together and are told through over 700 works on display, coming from Italian and foreign cultural institutes, in dialogue with the objects of the Museum's permanent collections and deposits.