The Museum, opened to the public in 1981, is housed in the sixteenth-century Palazzo Panichi overlooking Piazza Arringo in the historic center of Ascoli Piceno. The Museum is divided into three sections with a chronological path that winds through the three floors of the building. Through the finds from the very rich civic collection of Ascoli, created in 1865 on the basis of the eighteenth-century donation of Bishop Mazzoni, and the findings from recent excavations, it offers an extraordinary archaeological overview of the Ascoli area and highlights the peculiar characteristics of the southern Piceno.

The tour starts from the second floor where the finds from prehistoric complexes from the Paleolithic to the Bronze Age are exhibited. Particularly interesting is the exhibition dedicated, on the first floor, to the finds from the Piceno age complexes, which illustrate the plurality and peculiarity of the cultural aspects of this territory in the first millennium BC. site, it hosts the finds of the Roman age. The museum itinerary is completed with a visit to the nearby equipped area on the ground floor of Palazzo dei Capitani, overlooking the beautiful Piazza del Popolo, and with a visit to the Roman monuments still visible, such as the Theater and the Gemina Gate, in some cases also incorporated in later structures as in the case of the Temple whose structures are legible in the perimeter walls of the Church of San Venanzio.