Archaeological Museum of Bologna

The museum boasts a large number of Roman coins from the republican and imperial periods: of the 25,000 pieces, more than half are from the Palagi Collection. The collection, which is extremely important in terms of the number, quality and rarity of the pieces, documents the various phases of Roman coinage from the origins to the late empire. The section on republican denarii is especially rich, bearing witness to the extraordinary iconographic variety distinctive of this coinage; equally significant and important from the historical and numismatic standpoint is the core of the Imperial Age coins issued from 27 BC, when Octavian was proclaimed Augustus, until the fall of the Roman Empire. Belong to this nucleus a hundred Roman medallions, which were issued for commemorative purposes and which was widely popular especially during the second century AD; the collection is enriched by a hundred contorniates, issued by Rome and Constantinople mints between the second half of the 4th and the first half of the 5th century AD.