Galleria Colonna
Via della Pilotta
The construction of the magnificent Galleria Colonna in the huge complex of Palazzo Colonna began in 1654 and took 50 years, its grandeur reflecting the nobility of the Colonna family.
The gallery was conceived as a work of art in itself and the magnificent Baroque setting contributes to the presentation of the displayed masterpieces by artists including Lorenzo Monaco, Bronzino, Ghirlandaio, Salviati, Veronese, Palma il Vecchio, Jacopo and Domenico Tintoretto, Pietro da Cortona, Annibale Carracci, Francesco Albani, Guercino, Guido Reni, Carlo Maratta, Gaspard Dughet, Crescenzio Onofri, Girolamo Muziano, and Pompeo Batoni.
Opening: 9:00 am - 1:00 pm Saturday, closed August
Barberini Palace and National Gallery of Antique Art
Via Quattro Fontane 13
The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica is located on two sites; the Palazzo Corsini and the Palazzo Barberini. One of the grandest palaces in Rome, the Palazzo Barberini was built in the early seventeenth century, showing the architectural influence and design of Maderno, Borromini and Bernini. The interior is equally impressive, featuring the most famous work of Pietro da Cortona on the ceiling of the Salone, which took six years to complete. The Barberini collection is mainly of Italian painting of the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries with works by Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Lorenzo Lotto, Andrea del Sarto, Perugino, Caravaggio, Canaletto and Raphael.
Opening: 9:00 am - 7:00 pm Tuesday to Saturday
9:00 am - 1:00 pm Sundays and holidays
Doria Pamphili Gallery
Piazza del Collegio Romano
The recently refurbished Galleria, inside the majestic Palazzo Doria Pamphili dating from the fifteenth century, houses one of Rome's most distinguished private art collections, including works by Caravaggio, Titian, Raphael, Velázquez, Lippi, Lotto, Rubens, Guercino, Reni, Parmigianino, Bellini and Brueghel.
Opening: 10:00 am - 5:00 pm, closed Thursday
Modern National Gallery
Viale delle Belle Arti
The Modern National Gallery houses the most important Italian collection of paintings and sculptures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Works by artists belonging to most of the contemporary art movements are represented as well as neo-classicism, romanticism and Tuscan Macchiaoli impressionism. The gallery's exhibits include works by Goya, Géricault, Delacroix, Blake, Renoir, Rossetti, Courbet, Van Gogh, Degas, Monet, Cezanne, Modigliani, Mondrian, Duchamp, de Chirico, Cara, Miró, Kandinsky and Klimt.
Opening: 9:00 am - 7:00 pm Tuesday to Saturday
9:00 am - 1:00 pm Sundays and holidays
Gallery of the National Academy of St. Luca
Via dell'Accademia di S. Luca
One of Rome's most prestigious galleries, Galleria dell'Accademia di San Luca was founded as an art academy in 1478 with the statute that "every member should donate a work to its perpetual memory". Through these gifts, combined with other bequests and donations, the gallery contains an eclectic collection of classical works by artists such as Raphael, Canova, van Dyck, Titian, Guercino, il Sassoferrato, Reni and Pietro da Cortona.
Opening: 10:00 am - 12:30 pm Monday, Wednesday and Friday, closed 1st August until September 14th
Corsini Gallery
Via della Lungara
The other site of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, the Palazzo Corsini was originally built in the fifteenth century, but was considerably remodelled in the eighteenth. It is a relatively small, attractive gallery containing a large oeuvre of seventeenth and eighteenth century regional Italian painting as well as works by Rubens, Murrillo, Poussin, Brueghel and Caravaggio.
Opening: 9:00 am - 7:00 pm Tuesday to Friday
9:00 am - 2:00 pm Saturday
9:00 am - 1:00 pm Sunday and holidays
Spada Gallery
Piazza Capo di Ferro
The Galleria Spada, behind the majestic sixteenth century Palazzo Spada, exhibits the Spada family collection of works mainly from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as some second and third century Roman sculptures. Artists in the collection include Rubens, Durer, Caravaggio, Guercino, Domenichino, Guido Reni, Carracci, Salvator Rosa, Passarotti, Parmigianino, Solimena and del Sarto. In the General Council Chamber of the Palazzo is a colossal statue of Pompey, which is traditionally the one at the foot of which Julius Caesar was murdered.
Opening: 9:00 am - 7:00 pm Tuesday to Saturday
9:00 am - 1:00 pm Sundays and holidays
Musei Capitolini
Piazza del Campidoglio 1
The collection of the Musei Capitolini is one of the oldest in the world. It was started in 1471 by Pope Sixtus IV who presented the city with a number of bronze statues. It now houses a collection of Roman sculptures, such as the famous 'Lupa Capitolina', inscriptions, coins, mosaics, and objects connected with everyday life. The collection also contains Greek, Etruscan and Egyptian works of art. The museum's collection of marble sculptures and inscriptions was greatly enlarged in the 17th and 18th centuries by gifts from private collections. After Rome became Italy's capital in the 19th century, a great number of artefacts, found whilst digging the foundations for the city's new quarters, joined the collection. The collection is exhibited in two palaces: the 17th-century Museo Capitolino and the 15th-century Palazzo dei Conservatori, which also houses the famous Conservatori Apartment well known for its large frescoes. The Palazzo dei Conservatori has been enlarged twice this century, once in 1925 and again in 1950. An underground gallery, excavated in the 1940s, houses a collection of Latin and Greek inscriptions. The painting gallery or Pinacoteca is famous for its Italian and foreign masterpieces by such artists as Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Caravaggio and Rubens.
The Museums are positioned on either side of a square – the Piazza dei Campidogli. We visited the Palazzo Nuovo first which you approach on a gentle ascending ramp designed by Michaelangelo. This wing houses sculptures of all shapes and sizes, but for this viewer it was the enormity of some and the fantastic detail and execution of others that remain a vivid impression. In the size department, there’s the statue of Oceano to confront you with its massiveness in the courtyard as you enter. This prepares you somewhat for what’s to come inside on the ground floor: a gigantic statue of the god Mars, and a gilded bronze equestrian statue of the great Emperor Marcus Aurelius (which was fortunately mistaken by the early Christians as being Constantine the Great, otherwise it might not have survived). If the Roman Emperors interest you, then their likenesses in the Emperors’ Room are something not to miss out: there are 65 imperial busts here ranging from the more noble (Hadrian) to the more infamous (Commodus) of the Empire’s many rulers. As to statuary that captures a range of the dramatic and lifelike, visit the Dove Room and admire some of the statues of children, including one of a small girl protecting a bird from a snake; or in the Gladiators Hall, the very moving marble statue of the Dying Gaul; nor should you miss the Capitoline Venus standing in her own chamber, or the Discobulus—a Greek statue of a discus thrower. Every room, however, contains renditions in marble that will leave you awestruck.
The Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori (Conservators' Palace Museum) on the other side of the square does not lack for massive form either. In the courtyard are pieces of a colossal statue of Constantine (actually, what’s left of his foot) that once was in the Basilica of Maxentius (Constantine). At the top of the stairs are sculpted panels in low relief commemorating the victories of Marcus Aurelius. Although many of galleries are closed, you can still view the Spinario, a bronze of a young boy removing a thorn from his foot; the Esquiline Venus in marble; and the polished figure of Commodus as Hercules. Barely visible in the gloom is the famous bronze statue of the She-Wolf suckling Romulus and Remus—marvel at the mythical birth of a truly great city! If you’re ready for mere mortal refreshment after this visual feast, the outdoor terrace of the onsite Caffe Capitolino provides a pleasant view of the square
Opening: Tuesday-Sunday 09.00-19.00 Closed: Monday
Etruscan National Museum of Villa Giulia
p.le di Villa Giulia, 9
Villa Giulia was built for pope Julius III between 1550 and 1555, and many of the most important architects, painters and decorators of the period, from Vasari to Vignola and Ammannati contributed to its execution. The complex of the villa includes two courtyards divided by a nymphaeum which originally was a proper water theatre. The interiors of the villa were richly decorated with frescoes, stuccoes, polychrome marbles, and statues. After the pope's death the villa was inherited by his brother and later confiscated by Paul IV in 1557. The first restoration works started under Pius IV's pontificate, and the villa was destined to be residence of illustrious guests. New restoration works were carried out in the second half of the 18th-century by Clement XIV and Pius VI. Villa Giulia officially became a museum in 1889. After 1910, following some changes of the urban planning of the area, two new wings of the museum were built, and later on they were connected to the hemicycle of the villa by a hanging gallery.
Today, Villa Giulia is the most representative Etruscan museum in Italy. The pieces on display are arranged according to a topographic criterion and grouped by their place of origin, except for some collections which are exhibited according to a typological viewpoint. The Hall of Venus is devoted to the material from Pyrgi including remarkable evidences from the great Etruscan sanctuary of Leucotea-Ilizia; among the numerous sculptures from the precious polychrome terracotta decoration covering the wooden structure of the two temples of the sanctuary, remarkable are the famed pediment high relief portraying the Greek legend of the Seven against Thebes, and the late 6th-century B.C. gold leaves with Etruscan and Phoenician inscriptions. New exhibition rooms displaying ceramics, bronzes and gold-works from the Castellani Collection as well as a section devoted to the Villa of pope Julius III and the history of the museum are being arranged.
Opening: Tues. to Sun. 8.30-19.30
(ticket office closed at 18.30) - closed Mon
The Palatine Museum
via di San Gregorio
Re-opened to the public after 13 years, this museum displays detached frescos and finds which span the history of Rome from her origin to the Imperial age. On the first floor: Iron age and Republican period finds. On the second floor: detached frescos and inlaid works coming from the Domus Transitoria, the Imperial age statues of Augustus, Adrian and Anthony, a Polycletus' lance-bearer fragments and the superb clay architectural elements once belonging to Augustan buildings.
Opening: Daily 9-18
National Museum of Castel Sant'Angelo
lungotevere Castello, 50
Originally intended as a mausoleum by the Emperor Hadrian (117-138 AD), Castel Sant'Angelo became, in later centuries, the bastion of the Papal State, both literally and metaphorically. It is now possible to visit the interior of the fortress, which also used to be a sadly renowned prison. It is possible to visit the various rooms decorated with 16th-century frescos (the Apollo Hall, the Paul's Hall, the Perseus Hall, the Cupid and Psyche Hall), the prison, the collection of antique weapons, and the picture gallery (works by Carlo Crivelli, Luca Signorelli, Bartolomeo Montagna)
Opening: daily 9.00-20.00
(ticket office closed at 19.00)- closed Mon
Quadriennale Nazionale D'Arte di Roma
Via Nazionale, 194
The Palazzo delle Esposizioni di Roma, headquarters of the best Capitoline exhibitions, hosts the Quadriennale Nazionale d'Arte di Roma (held every four years). Its purpose is to show Italy's best works of art to the public, especially trends and new expressions from the previous years. Call for details.
Galleria Spada
Piazza Capo di Ferro
The Palazzo Spada also houses several municipal offices. It was built in mid 16th century for Cardinal Capo di Ferro, and the Piazza bears his name. Cardinal Spada in the 17th century hired Bernini and Borromini to work on the façade of the building that resulted in the false perspectives, one of which is part of the gallery exhibit. The day I got there, they would allow 15 minute tours of the second floor and a tour of the second floor 15 minutes later. The 2nd floor has halls with paintings on the walls by Italian artists such as Guido Reni, Guercino and others, also works by Rubens, Durer, and a collection of furniture and jewelry, the 1st floor has just the “Perspective” which is one statue surrounded by columns that create much longer collonade than there really is. They do not allow taking pictures anywhere. Even though the collection is magnificent it is rather small, and I found that it wasn’t worth the effort, considering the amount of time I spent waiting and getting there and the admission charge of 5 euros per person.
Villa Farnesina
Via della Lungara, 230
The Renaissance Villa Farnesina is not very large but is filled with works of art, the most famous being by Raphael. The villa was designed in the early 16th century by Baldassare Peruzzi for Agostino Chigi, a banker and patron of the arts. One of the rooms in the villa not to be missed is the Galleria or Loggia of Psyche. The style is Raphael's but it was mainly his pupils who worked on it. The Galatea Room is another pearl with a marvellous fresco, by Raphael himself, of the Triumph of Galatea. The Perspective Room (Sala delle Prospettive) by Peruzzi is painted to resemble a loggia from which one gazes out at views of the countryside. On Chigi's death, Raphael's paintings had to be sold as his heirs were unable to keep up the property. All that remains of the master are his frescoes. The property was bought by the Farnese family from whom it takes its present name. The villa is now the home of the Academy of the Lincei and the National Collection of Drawings and Prints. Admission is EUR4.
Galleria Colonna
Via della Pilotta, 17
This gallery is attached to Palazzo Colonna and is made up of six rooms, richly decorated with ceiling frescoes. Marcantonio Colonna's 'Apotheosis,' a powerful fresco, can be seen at the entrance. There are also two writing desks, which are marvellous works of art and well worth seeing. The first desk is decorated in semi-precious stone with bronze statuettes and the second is decorated with inlaid ivory. Not to be missed is Bronzino's piece entitled 'Venus and Cupid.' Unfortunately, this splendid gallery is only open once a week, but it is definitely worth visiting in order to see these unique pieces. There is no wheelchair access. Admission is EUR5.16 for adults; EUR4 for students.
