Missionary Ethnological Museum
The museum was founded by Gregory XVI (1831-1846) in the Lateran Palace in 1884 and John XXIII had it relocated in the Vatican in 1970. It contains Greek original works, Roman copies and sculptures dating from the 1st to the 3rd c. A.D. The most famous group is Athena and Marsyas, a copy of a Greek original by Myron (c. 450 B.C.). Inaugurated by Pius XI in 1926, this museum was also moved from the Lateran Palace. The collection consists of artworks and historical vestiges from missions all over the world. There are some interesting models of non-Catholic places of worship, such as Beijing’s Temple of the Sky (originally from the 15th century but re-done in the 18th century), the Altar of Confucius and the Shintoist Temple of Nara, Japan’s ancient capital city. The Buddhist devotional statues are testimonies of spiritual life in Tibet, Indonesia, India and the Far East; the findings of Islamic and Central African culture are also interesting, and so are objects and works of art, especially from Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua.