Museo della Civiltà Normanna

The Museum of Norman Civilisation is located inside the Norman Castle, in the heart of the Municipal Villa of Ariano Irpino.

The museum is the result of twenty years of work carried out by CESN, the European Centre for Norman Studies. The museum's holdings include an important collection of Norman-Swabian coins, including the Duchy and the Augustal, and other artefacts such as parchments, 16th-century editions, engravings, a silver evangelary plate and stone materials, together with the highly valuable reproduction of King Roger II's cloak. The Museum also has a weapons room, containing about 220 authentic examples of arms in auction from the 6th-18th centuries AD: halberds, pikes, corseques, scythes, spears, roncones, ranseurs, axes, buttafuoco, alighieri, quadrelloni, forks, tridents and skewers; the room also houses rare examples of pre-Roman, Roman and Lombard cutting weapons, including a very rare Roman pilum.

The jewel in the crown of the Museum of Norman Civilisation is the large, recently restored model of the Battle of Hastings, which reconstructs the course of a decisive event in the history of the Normans in Europe in 1066. Other notable exhibits include a 16th-century suit of armour, a 12th-century beheading axe and a life-size mannequin of a fully armed Norman warrior on foot.

A rich testimony to one of the oldest counties in Italy, the Museum of Norman Civilisation in Ariano Irpino carefully preserves the details of a particularly important historical period for the city of Tricolle.