The museum was inaugurated in the presence of king Victor Emmanuel II in 1870 in the buildings of the Cenacolo di Fuligno on via Faenza.

The huge collection of ancient ceramics is shown in a large room with numerous cases on the second floor.

The most important of the vases is a large black figure krater of c. 570 BC signed by the potter Ergotimos and the painter Kleitias.

It is named the François vase after the archaeologist who found it in 1844 in an Etruscan tomb at fonte Rotella, on the Chiusi road, and shows a series of Greek mythological narratives on both sides.

In the nineteenth century, Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, began acquisition of the artifacts now housed at the Egyptian Museum.

The Florentine collection continued to grow after this time, with donations from private individuals and scientific institutions.

There are statues from the reign of Amenhotep III, a chariot from the eighteenth dynasty,[1] a pillar from the tomb of Seti I, parts of the burial equipment of Tjesraperet, who was a wet nurse of King Taharqo, a New Testament papyrus (𝔓2, 𝔓65) and many other distinctive artifacts from many periods.

A separate section of the museum is in the baroque Villa Corsini a Castello, nearby Florence, mostly dedicated to Ancient Roman and Etruscan sculpture.