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.