An insulating and innovative hi-tech platform designed specifically to protect the "Sarcophagus of the Spouses”, a masterpiece of Etruscan art known throughout the world and housed in the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome, from vibrations caused by rail and road traffic, as well as from possible earthquakes. It was made and installed by a team of researchers from Sapienza University of Rome (coordinator), ENEA, Somma srl and the Conservation Service of the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia, as part of the research project MONALISA (MONitoraggio Attivo e Isolamento da Vibrazione e Sismi di oggetti d'Arte), funded by the Lazio Region and the Ministry of University and Research, in which Roma Tre University is also participating. Thanks to the infrastructures and technologies deployed - including magnified motion, hi-tech sensors, vibrating tables, mechanics test benches, mathematical models and computational resources - the project has made it possible to study several innovative aspects aimed at the conservation of the work. An innovative project in defense of one of the most famous works of the ancient world: we are talking about a world-renowned artifact discovered in 1881 in more than 400 fragments at the Banditaccia necropolis in Cerveteri, Rome. Made of baked clay, only one replica is known with certainty abd is now in the Louvre Museum. The 'Bride and Groom' are daily threatened by the vibrations produced by the passage of motor vehicles and streetcars along the nearby Via delle Belle Arti and by the additional stresses caused by the Rome-Viterbo railway, underground in that section.
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