The National Museum of Abruzzo was inaugurated on 23 September 1951 in the sixteenth-century castle of L'Aquila, recently restored from the damage of the Nazi occupation. In addition to the deposits of the local Superintendence, the collections of the Aquilano Civic Museum, established in the late nineteenth century and dismantled in 1942 for war reasons, converged into it. In 1958 the eastern bastion of the fortress received the fossil skeleton of Mammuthus meridionalis found a few years earlier in the Aquila basin. In 1966 the works of the Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art, established in 1935, also received "in temporary deposit for an indefinite period". the most tragic months of the war, the precautionary transfer to the Vatican deposits, sheltered from bombing and plundering. A selection of the Museum's collections, which the earthquake of April 6, 2009 has dramatically ousted from its historical site, is now housed in the complex of the former municipal slaughterhouse of L'Aquila , built in the years 1881-1883 and decommissioned in 1990. In the new location provisional , after a shrewd repair and renovation, carried out between 2010 and 2015, a selection of about sixty archaeological finds and 112 paintings, sculptures and goldsmiths, from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age . These are masterpieces that testify to the identity, history and vitality of the culture of the entire region, some of which were recovered from the rubble of the earthquake and restored to new life thanks to complex restoration work.

The archaeological section ( room A ), consists of finds from Amiternum, Aveia and Peltuinum, important Italic and Roman centers of the Aquila basin, including the Amiternino Calendar (about 20 AD) and the stone reliefs depicting a gladiator fight (I century BC) and a funeral ceremony (1st century AD). The Middle Ages in Abruzzo ( room B ) is documented by an exceptional collection of Madonnas , which in terms of richness and artistic quality has very few national and international comparisons: some very rare and precious 13th- century painted icons (Madonna "de Ambro", Madonna di Sivignano , Madonna di Montereale), and numerous wood sculptures ; majestic and sacred those of Romanesque-Byzantine culture, dating back to the thirteenth and twelve hundred (Madonna di Lettopalena, Madonna delle Cocanelle); the fourteenth-century ones are slender and supple, revealing the spirituality and grace of the new Gothic art in the sweetness of the face and the refinement of the lines (Madonna di Fossa, Madonna di San Silvestro). The fifteenth century ( room C ) opens with dazzling paintings on a pure gold background : among them the Triptych by Beffi (1410-1415), attributed to Leonardo di Sabino from Teramo. Testimonies of the early Abruzzese Renaissance are the paintings by Andrea Delitio and the wooden sculptures by Giovanni di Biasuccio and Silvestro dell'Aquila (San Sebastiano, 1478). Among the paintings of Franciscan subjects and commissions (room D) stands out the polyptych depicting San Giovanni da Capestrano and stories from his life, the work of an unknown master with a complex culture, who is also credited with the painting depicting Saint Francis receiving the stigmata. In the sixteenth century ( room E ) the highly original personality of Saturnino Gatti emerges, recently recognized as one of the leading figures of the Italian Renaissance. The Museum exhibits two paintings on wood by this artist (Madonna degli Angeli, 1505; Madonna del Rosario, 1511) and several terracotta sculptures (Nativity of Tione and Sant'Antonio Abate, 1512), saved from the earthquake and admirably restored. The review concludes with the paintings by important Neapolitan seventeenth -century masters ( room F ): Mattia Preti, Bernardo Cavallino, Jusepe de Ribera, Andrea Vaccaro, Massimo Stanzione.