Established in 1916 and inaugurated in 1924, it is located inside the 15th-century Palazzo Vitelleschi, an important monument of the early Latium Renaissance.

The Museum houses two historic 19th-century collections, the Municipal Collection and the private collection of the Counts Bruschi-Falgari. It was later enriched with material from excavations conducted throughout the Tarquin area, from the acropolis to the necropolises surrounding the port of Gravisca.

The exhibition is divided into several thematic areas, covering a chronological span from the Iron Age (9th century B.C.) to the Roman period. The exhibitions include monumental and funerary sculptures, grave goods and local pottery, imported and imitation pottery from the Geometric period to the Hellenistic period, and the settlement. The rooms also house the faithful reconstructions of some funerary sites such as the chamber tomb of the Versna and the painted tombs of the Triclinium, the Bigas, the Olympians and the Nave.

Among the numerous exhibits, visitors can find examples of local ceramic production from the ancient phase including cinerary urns from the Villanovan period (9th century BC), of the biconical or hut-shaped vase types, and the fanciful coeval pottery.

This is followed by tableware from the Orientalising period (8th-7th centuries BC) with some large ceramics with geometric decorations and numerous bucchero vases. The shiny black colour of the latter, which is a typically Etruscan production, was obtained through a complex oxidation-reduction firing process, which gave the objects a metal-like appearance. The chronological sequence shows the transition from thin bucchero to heavy bucchero with elaborate relief decorations.

The Archaic period (6th-5th centuries BC) shows a massive import of refined painted and figured ceramics of Corinthian and Attica production, whose style strongly influenced the work of Etruscan workshops.

In the Hellenistic phase (4th-2nd century BC), on the other hand, we see the re-emergence of important local ceramic production. Worthy of note are the terracotta sarcophagi, made with the aid of moulds that made ‘mass’ production possible but customisable with hand-modelled details, the votive terracottas, depicting anatomical parts or faces that introduce Roman portrait art, and the architectural terracottas, tiles, sime and antefixes that decorated the roofs of buildings and temples.

The standout exhibit in the Museum, as well as the symbol of the city, is the fictile group of winged horses, a high relief from the 4th century BC depicting a pair of winged horses pulling a chariot, unfortunately not preserved, in the act of taking flight. The slab was part of the pediment decoration of the temple of the Ara della Regina, the monumental remains of which are still visible on the plateau of the Civita, the site of the ancient city.