Museums

One of the most visited sites in Rome as well as one of the most prestigious existing collections of art, the Borghese Gallery receives 1,700 visitors every day and is well known throughout the world. Situated in the villa of the notorious, greedy and sophisticated collector Scipione Borghese, the museum hosts the largest number of original Caravaggio’s. And this is not all. From the most important group of sculptures by Bernini (Apollo and Daphne, the Rape of Proserpina, Aeneas and Anchises, the Veiled Truth) to Canova’s Paolina Borghese to the masterpieces of Raphael, Correggio, Rubens, Carracci, Reni, Lorenzo Lotto, Antonello Da Messina, Guercino, Titian: here visitors risk Stendhal syndrome! A stroll in the surrounding public garden, favored by Romans, completes the visit.

One of the most prestigious european collections of art displayed in the “Reggia del sole”, or better, the palace of Maffeo Barberini, symbol of the political, economical and cultural power of the family. Prototype of the Roman baroque palace, largely exceeded the already luxurious patrician Roman mansions. The impressive brilliance of the facade in Via delle Quattro Fontane, to which plan participated architects of the level of Maderno, Bernini and Borromini, and the immense vaulted atrium which opens to the stunning Italian garden, these alone are worth the price of entrance but are also just the first step to the glories of the gallery: over the triumphant vault of Pietro Da Cortona which decorates the ceiling of the main baroque room of the building, we are left breathless by Judith Beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio, the Madonna and Child by Filippo Lippi, Christ and the Adulteress by Tintoretto, Et in Arcadia ego by Guercino, Henry VIII by Holbein, Saint Francis by de Ribera, Beatrice Cenci by Guido Reni as well as Raphael’s Fornarina, a show-piece of the collection and one of most renowned painting in art history.

The magnificent palace from the 15th Century in the Bramante style, acquired by the Corsini family in the 18th Century, who entrusted the restoration to Ferdinando Fuga, today is the location of the Accademia dei Lincei (Lincean Academy), of the Botanical garden of Rome in the courtyard and part of the National Gallery of Ancient Art (the other part is in Palazzo Barberini). The collection of Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini is the only one of the Roman collections from 1700 which is still complete today and conserved in the same environment which hosted it from the beginning, with the original furnishings. The tour brings back the visitors to the spirit of that time and recreates the ambiance in which the noble families were living. In this unique atmosphere a series of undisputed masterpieces finds their place. The Triptych of The Last Judgment by Fra Angelico, Ruben’s San Sebastian, Van Dyck’s Madonna and Child, Caravaggio’s Saint John the Baptist, The Triumph of Ovid by Nicolas Poussin, Guido Reni’s Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, just to mention a few. The visit also includes other rooms of the palace which was for a period of time the residence of Queen Cristina of Sweden, who came to the city of the popes after she abjured Protestantism and surrounded herself with a refined gathering of intellectuals. The alcove of the queen still shows the grotesque frescoes from the late 1500.

Between Via del Corso and Piazza del Collegio Romano was the residence of Camillo Pamphili and Olimpia Aldobrandini, who started the collection which was subsequently completed in 1700 by the Genoan side of the family, the Doria Pamphilj, and that presently counts more 400 masterpieces. The grand entrance hall, decorated by great landscapists of the 1600, leads to the ballroom, still adorned with silk tapestries, and to the main gallery, which hosts invaluable masterpieces.

From the Maddalena by Caravaggio to the Salome by Titian, from the portrait of Innocent X by Velazquez to the landscapes of Annibale Carracci, Claude Lorrain, Paul Bril and Gaspar van Wittel. In the twelve rooms of the gallery the visitor can sense such an atmosphere of regality that even Kaiser Wilhelm, while visiting the palace in honor of King Umberto I and Queen Margherita, confessed that he could not offer a similar hospitality in his own palaces.

Together with the Doria Pamphilj, the collection of Cardinal Girolamo I Colonna is the most important private art collection in Rome. Hosted in the family palace, whose lavish rooms are decorated with frescoes narrate the glories of the various members of the dynasty, it includes masterpieces by the great masters from 1400 to 1700 from Bronzino, Ghirlandaio, Pietro Da Cortona and Annibale Carracci, of which we can admire the famous Bean Eater (Mangiatore di Fagioli). In the 15th Century wing of the palace, the apartment of Princess Isabelle, decorated with frescoes by Pinturicchio, holds a refined gallery of paintings by Nordic masters (Brueghel the Elder, Van Wittel, Dughet). The beautiful coffee house, one of the rare examples in the city, was declared “the most marvelous and exquisite 18th century space in Rome”.

The splendid 16th Century building that captivates the visitors with its exquisite stuccos by Giulio Mazzoni and was restored in 1600 by Francesco Borromini, hosts, as well as the famous prospective gallery of the same architect, the collection of Cardinal Bernardino Spada, composed by several masterpieces of Italian art from the 16th and 17th Centuries (Guercino, Guido Reni, Artemisia Gentileschi, Orazio Gentileschi just to mention a few).

One of the most prestigious collections of Italian paintings of the 19th and 20th Centuries is displayed in the building designed by Cesare Bazzani for the international exhibition of the 50th anniversary of the unification of Italy. The museum as avant-garde was the idea of Palma Bucarelli, director and superintendent in the years in which the gallery became the leading public institution in the art scene, and started prolific collaborations with museums all over the world. Leading Italian artists (Balla, Burri, Guttuso, De Chirico, Giacometti, Morandi, Sironi, De Nittis, Fattori, Canova, Lega) are side-by-side with international masters (Cézanne, Monet, Mondrian, Van Gogh, Klimt, Pollock, Duchamp, Fontana) in a suggestive path organized by artists or by theme.

The last noble Roman palace, the 18th century Braschi Palace, that was built by Pope Pius VI for his nephew Luigi, is located in the heart of the Renaissance and Baroque Rome, between Piazza Navona and Campo de’ Fiori. Recent restorations brought back the original splendor to the majestic architecture, to the spectacular courtyard, to the elegant stuccos, and enhanced the monumental staircase built with ancient red granite columns originating from a portico traced to the Emperor Caligula, on which also collaborated the architect Giuseppe Valadier. Thanks to the richness and the vastness of his collections, the museum is the most significant institution for knowledge of social history and artistic activities in Rome from the medieval period to the beginning of 1900. There are over 100,000 pieces of art – including paintings, sketches, sculptures, engravings, photographs, furniture, clothes, ceramics, carriages and litters, architectural elements and frescoes. The new organization of the photographs’ room of the museum includes a display of shots of Roman cityscapes which bring the visitor through a virtual journey in the architecture and the most significant foreshortening views of the city. The visit to the Museum of Rome offers a new approach to the secular history of the city, allows to discover unexpected aspects of the Capital, the characters of the main noble families, the sites nowadays disappeared.

The splendid mannerist villa built for Pope Giulio III, commissioned to Ammannati, Vignola and Vasari, hosts the national Etruscan museum. The endless pieces of art, jewels, Etruscan funerary effects take the guest through the history of the Italic population which heavily influenced the Romans. Skilled masters of coroplastic art and expert and unequalled toreutics artists, the Etruscans left us unbelievable masterpieces. The famous statue of Apollo of Veii (Apollo di Veio), the Sarcophagus of the Spouses, the terracotta decorations of the temples of Pyrgi and Falerii Veteres, prove the extraordinary bond between the populations of central Italy and Magna Greece.

Known as the oldest museum in the world, sits in the square of the Campidoglio (the Capitol), made immortal by Michelangelo. The decorations of the rooms recount the history of the birth of Rome and the collection of sculptures, that includes the world famous bronze she-wolf nursing her twins, is unique. In the superb grand new glass hall designed by the architect Carlo Aymonino is placed the original statue of Marcus Aurelius and are exposed the foundations of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, the great temple of the state cult in Rome where the Sibylline Books were kept. From the corridors of the ancient Tabularium, which stored the laws of the State (tabulae bronzee), the visitor enjoys a breathtaking view of the Roman Forum. At the end of the tour a snack on the Caffarelli terrace concludes the walk and offers a multi-sensorial exclusive experience.

In an extraordinary context in which the silence of the cloisters and charterhouses contrast the chaos of the urban traffic, stands this beautiful museum, symbol of the continuity between ancient and modern. In the vast rooms of the Baths of Diocletian, the biggest ever built in the Roman world, Michelangelo in 1562 designed the Basilica of St Mary of the Angels and the Christian Martyrs and initiated the realization of the charterhouse. The ambiance of the baths was maintained and can be admired in the Basilica, including the curvilinear wall which forms the characteristic concave facade. The enormous exedra with a flight of stairs, perhaps used in the past as a theater, was reproduced in the 19th Century by Gaetano Koch in the homonymous Piazza and is still visible today. The museum boasts one of the most important and richest epigraphic collections in the world with an assortment of around 10,000 pieces.

The museum is one of a kind, a “museum of itself”. Originally it was a vast porticoed courtyard annexed to the theater that Lucio Cornelio Balbo, General of Augustus, constructed at the end of the First Century B.C. Today it represents an exceptional testimony to the evolution of Roman society and the urban landscape from ancient times to the 20th Century. The excavations made in the last twenty years brought to light a series of transformations and reuses of the same monument and enabled to retrace the social customs and economic activities of the time which moves from antiquity to the Middle Ages.

On the site where once stood the residential palace of Sixtus V, the “tough pope”, today it is possible to visit an enchanting museum which hosts one of the most sophisticated collections of Roman classic art from the age of the Republic to the Empire. Augusto of Via Labicana, La Fanciulla of Anzio, the Sleeping Hermaphroditus, The Dying Niobide, The Resting Boxer and the The Lancellotti Discus Thrower are only a few of the masterpieces that the museum offers to the visitors.

Constructed as the residence of Girolamo Riario, one of the many nephews of Sixtus IV, the pope of the Sistine Chapel and Ponte Sisto. Built upon previous ancient and medieval structures, which ruins are still visible today, in one of the most evocative milieus of Renaissance Rome, the palace hosts the collections of Roman noble families from the 16th and 17th Centuries, displayed following the antiquarian taste of that time. In the beautiful halls, which still display the original frescoes, it is possible to admire the famous Throne and Ares of the Ludovisi collection, The Galatian Suicide and the Head of Hera which Johann Wolfgang von Goethe described as the most beautiful of ancient times.