The museum offers a synthesis of life in one of the main colonies in Roman
Hispania, Augusta Emerita, promoted after the supremacy of Lusitania, and which
subsequently became the first effective capital of Hispania.
It houses numerous articles found at the archaeological site in Mérida, which
has been awarded the World Heritage designation by the UNESCO. The National
Museum of Roman Art is located in a building by Rafael Moneo that is a reference
in contemporary museum architecture. With a display of emblematic items
including Roman mosaics, sculptures, epigraphs and documents, it shows all
aspects of the everyday life in a colony, Augusta Emerita, founded by
Augustus after one of the episodes in the Cantabrian Wars, and which represents
one of the great examples of the Romanisation process of Hispania.