The Archaeological Museum of Tarquinia is housed in the Vitelleschi beautiful palace, built between 1436 and 1439 by Cardinal Giovanni Vitelleschi, in the time of Pope Eugene IV.
The palace, one of the most important monuments of the early Renaissance in Lazio, shows the slow transition from the Gothic to the Renaissance language that only in the first half of the 15th century was spreading in peripheral centres.

The building architect, or the architects, included in the project, incorporating them, existing structures: a tower house and other buildings of the 12th-14th centuries overlooking a street corresponding to the corridor that opens onto the back of the courtyard, on the right.

Since the death of the Cardinal the Palace was also used as a princely accommodation for the Popes when staying in Corneto. In 1900 it became property of the City and in 1916 was given to the State so to transform it in the Archaeological Museum.
Opened in 1924 with the union of two historic 19th century collections, the Raccolta Comunale and the private collection of the Bruschi-Falgari earls, the Museum has gone then gradually enriching itself with the introduction of materials from the excavations in the area of the ancient Etruscan city, of the surrounding large necropolis and of the rest of the Tarquinian territory.
The museum occupies the three floors of the building, the last of which houses some painted tombs (del Triclinio, delle Bighe, delle Olimpiadi, della Nave and a fragment of the Tomba della Pulcella) whose frescoes have been removed - because of conservation - from their original support.

(from M. Cataldi, Tarquinia, Regione Lazio 1993)