The museum was inaugurated as an Etruscan Museum in 1870 and is one of the oldest archaeological museums in Italy. Initially, it was located at the Cenacle of the Conservatory of Fuligno and housed a collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman finds that came from the dismemberment of the Medici and Lorraine collections, previously preserved in the Uffizi. In that same location, in 1855, the Egyptian Museum was also founded. The spaces of the cenacle soon became inadequate to house all the collections, and in 1880, the Museo Archeologico was moved to the Palazzo della Crocetta: its current location.
The Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Florence today includes the Etruscan Section, the Roman Section, the Greek Section, the Egyptian Section, also known as the Egyptian Museum (the second collection in Italy after the one of Turin), the Numismatics and others.
Among the Etruscan finds of great importance, the Chimera, a bronze votive statue discovered in Arezzo in 1533, which represents an animal part-lion, part-goat and part-snake. Among the main works preserved in the museum there are also the statues of Arringatore, Minerva, the terracotta and travertine urns of Volterra and Greek ceramic vases bearing black figures.