Housed since 1948 in the former convent of San Domenico, the museum was started with the collection of artefacts from the Perugia areas and from Umbria in general, as well as with the donation of the original Friggeri and Bellucci collections.

In the cloister at the entrance, under the portico, are exhibited stone materials consisting mainly in travertine cinerary urns from the Hellenistic era, and in ancient Roman epigraphs.
In the underground exhibition halls, close to the main entrance, there is the reconstruction of the tomb of the Cai Cutu family (3rd-1st cent. B.C.). Discovered in 1983 at Monteluce, the three-roomed tomb contained fifty cinerary urns and one unburied skeleton, the male founder of the family.

The burial set accompanying the unburied remains consisted of his panoply (shield, sword, shinguards, helmet cheek pieces), a ritual olpe and the kottabos, a typical table game favoured by the Etruscans.

Along the upper loggia, in the Etruscan-Roman section, are displayed Hellenistic urns found in Perugia’s necropolis, and on the northern side, is the hall with the bronze artefacts found in 1812 at San Mariano di Corciano: three parade chariots, which are among the most important findings of archaic Etruscan bronze craftsmanship in the world (570-520 B.C.).

Further along are the halls dedicated to the Etruscan findings discovered in Perugia, among which the Montegualandro stele (end of 7th-start of 6th cent. B.C.), the Sperandio sarcophagus (510-500 B.C.) and the Cippo di Perugia, a boundary stone bearing a long and archeologically important inscription in the Etruscan language.