Ribezzo Archaeological Museum

The museum takes its name from Francesco Ribezzo, a Brindisi philologist of the early twentieth century and a scholar of the pre-Roman languages of southern Italy. The true protagonists of the collections are the Messapians, a refined people who inhabited this land between the 6th and 3rd centuries BC. Messapian pottery, with its crisp white geometries on a reddish ground, and votive bronzes tell of a religiosity mingling Greek, Italic and Eastern influences.

One room is devoted to the bronzes recovered from the harbour bed, where they had lain for centuries: they are among the masterpieces of Hellenistic art in Apulia. The sea that always connected Brindisi to the Greek East has, over the decades, returned fragments of that ancient conversation.

Among the most fascinating finds are the Messapian inscriptions: carvings in stone in an alphabet derived from Greek, used by a people who spoke an Indo-European language still wrapped in mystery. Every sign is a lost word waiting to be spoken.