The exhibition catalogue aims to give the public an idea, on the one hand, of the remains left by the Etruscans in Campania (Part I) and, on the other, of how the rediscovery of the region’s Etruscan past and its dialectical relationship with Magna Graecia have fascinated generations of intellectuals since the late Renaissance, encouraging them to develop new methods of investigation to unveil a historical enigma deeply rooted in the cultural identity of the South, which archaeology would only solve in the early twentieth century, finally giving a face and substance to Etruscan power (Part II).

The exhibition consists of over 600 artefacts of inestimable value, mostly from the collections and deposits of the MANN, the subject of a careful survey and purposeful restoration work enabling many of them to be presented for the first time to the public. However, there are also exceptional loans such as that of the very rich Bernardini tomb in Palestrina made available by the Museo Nazionale Etrusco (National Etruscan Museum) of Villa Giulia and for the first time combined with the splendour of the “princes” of Campania.