Public display and civic identity : antiquities in the Seggi of southern Italy, 14. to 18. centuries

From the fourteenth century until the end of the eighteenth century, almost every town of the Kingdom of Naples had one or more Seggi where the main families used to meet in order to take decisions about the city governement. The Seggi were also the preferred places for locating antiquities and ancient inscriptions of the towns. This paper analyzes the character of such collections, focusing on their meaning for the civic identity of the urban communities of southern Italy between the late medieval and the early modern period.