Top Museums
If you prefer to view your artwork in museums rather than in churches, Rome will not disappoint. You could visit a museum or gallery each day for an entire week's worth of vacation, if you so choose, each housing important historical works.
National Museum of Rome
The National Museum of Rome is home to one of the world's foremost archaeology collections. You will find great works of art and sculpture here, as well as a unique numismatic collection that shows the evolution of currency in Italy, including some extremely rare coins.
Some of the works you can view here include historic church frescoes, the sculptures Suicide of Gaul and Tivoli General, and mosaics taken from the villa of Livia, wife of Rome's first emperor, Augustus. The museum's website is
Museum of Roman Civilization
This museum is dedicated to highlighting ancient Roman civilization. It attempts to document ancient Roman life as completely as possible, using a combination of reconstructed works, casts, and models. You read that correctly: What you're seeing in this museum is not original.
Essential
If you visit the Museum of Roman Civilization, be sure to check out its model of Imperial Rome, which is built at a scale of 1:250. The vast reconstruction by architect Italo Gismondi is mesmerizing, with an intact Colosseum and sprawling city streets all around.
Collections are divided into fifty-nine sections. The museum's first fourteen rooms tell the complete story of the history of Rome. Next is a section on Christianity, followed by sections about everyday Roman life. The English version of the museum's website is at
Villa Giulia National Etruscan Museum
This museum is, as its name implies, actually a villa. Pope Julius III built it in the mid-1500s, though little of that original design survives today. The on-site museum was founded in 1889 to collect pre-Roman antiquities, most of which come from the Etruscan and Faliscan civilizations. Among the works you can view here are the almost life-size funerary monument called Bride and Groom, the Pyrgi Tablets (writings that provide evidence of Phoenician influence in the Western Mediterranean), and the Apollo of Veii statue.
Capitoline Museums
This group of art and archaeological museums is situated in Piazza del Campidoglio, atop Capitoline Hill. The creation of the buildings dates back to 1471, when Pope Sixtus IV donated a group of bronze statues to the people of Rome.
The three main buildings that stand today are Palazzo Senatorio, built in the 1100s, Palazzo dei Conservatori, built in the mid-1500s, and Palazzo Nuovo, built in the 1600s. Within these buildings you can view the Statue of Hercules in gilded bronze, the Bust of Medusa, and the Statue of Eros Stringing His Bow. More details are available in English at
Borghese Gallery
The Borghese Gallery is named for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V, whose collection of paintings, sculpture, and antiquities forms the basis of this museum's offerings. It's an easy museum to get around quickly, with just twenty rooms on two floors.
Fact
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, whose works are displayed at Borghese Gallery, lived to be just thirty-nine years old. He was pugnacious and belligerent, often carrying a sword around town to pick fights. He killed a man during a 1606 brawl in Rome, and had to flee with a bounty placed on his head. Caravaggio died the following year.
Borghese was a collector of Bernini sculptures and Caravaggio works, both of which fall within the Baroque period. He also was a collector of Raphael paintings. What's interesting about the sculptures at this site is that many are still displayed in the areas where they were originally purchased to stand. Learn more at
Museum of Castel Sant'Angelo
This building also goes by the name Mausoleum of Hadrian, as the Roman Emperor Hadrian originally commissioned it between 135 and 139 A.D. as a tomb for himself and his family. It served as a fortress, a papal state prison, and a castle at various times. It became a museum in the twentieth century.
Tourists are allowed to visit all the rooms, including the jail and the popes' apartments, and examine the collections of weapons and documents. Frescoes and sculptures are also on view.
National Gallery of Modern Art
This is the one art museum where you can get your imagination out of ancient Rome and into more modern times. The works here are representative of the Neoclassic and Romantic eras, and the displays include the largest collection of works by 1800s and 1900s artists such as Balla, Fattori, and Burri. In keeping with the timeline that is the museum's focus, you can also find works by foreign artists including Cézanne, Duchamp, Degas, Van Gogh, Pollock, and Monet. The National Gallery of Modern Art is close to the Villa Giulia National Etruscan Museum, so they make a nice one-two punch if you want to plan a morning of museum hopping.
