Explore Rome

The Capitoline Museums occupy the Palazzo dei Conservatori and the Palazzo Nuovo on Piazza del Campidoglio, the square Michelangelo designed on the Capitoline Hill. The collection began with ancient bronzes Pope Sixtus IV gave to the people of Rome in 1471 and includes the Capitoline Wolf, the Dying Gaul and the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.

Palazzo Valentini is a palace beside Trajan's Column that has housed Rome's provincial administration since 1873. Excavations beneath it since 2005 have uncovered two large houses of the imperial period and remains of a temple, which visitors see on a guided route where projections and Piero Angela's narration reconstruct the missing parts.

Palazzo Venezia is an early Renaissance palace on Piazza Venezia, built in the 1450s by Cardinal Pietro Barbo, later Pope Paul II, and used by Mussolini as his headquarters in the 20th century. It houses the National Museum of Palazzo Venezia, with paintings, sculpture, ceramics, bronzes and decorative arts, and encloses a large garden.

The Galleria Doria Pamphilj is a private art collection on the first floor of the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj on Via del Corso, still owned by the Doria Pamphilj family. Its rooms hang mainly 16th- and 17th-century paintings, among them Velázquez's Portrait of Innocent X, shown beside Bernini's bust of the same pope, and two works by Caravaggio.

The Museo di Roma occupies Palazzo Braschi, a Neoclassical palace between Piazza Navona and Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, built from 1790 by Cosimo Morelli for Luigi Braschi Onesti, nephew of Pope Pius VI. Its rooms show paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture and furniture on the history and daily life of Rome from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.

The Leonardo da Vinci Museum occupies rooms of the Renaissance Palazzo della Cancelleria, next to Campo de' Fiori. It shows large wooden models of machines reconstructed from Leonardo's notebooks, several of which visitors can operate, along with holograms and themed showcases; the basement reveals the tomb of Aulus Hirtius, who died in 43 BC.

The Case Romane del Celio are Roman houses beneath the Basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo on the Caelian Hill, opened to visitors in 2002. Built as two blocks of flats with shops in the 2nd and 3rd centuries and later joined into one house, they comprise more than 20 rooms, 13 of them with wall paintings, and a small antiquarium.

Palazzo Altemps is a 15th-century palace north of Piazza Navona, begun for Girolamo Riario and bought in 1568 by Cardinal Marco Sittico Altemps. Since 1997 it has been a branch of the Museo Nazionale Romano, showing ancient sculpture from noble collections such as the Boncompagni Ludovisi and Mattei, an Egyptian section and frescoed rooms.

Palazzo Barberini is a Baroque palace begun in 1625 for the family of Pope Urban VIII, designed by Carlo Maderno and continued by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini. It houses part of the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, with Raphael's La Fornarina and Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes, and a great hall with a ceiling fresco by Pietro da Cortona.

The Museum of the Ara Pacis is a glass and travertine pavilion by Richard Meier, opened in 2006 beside the Mausoleum of Augustus on the Tiber embankment. It houses the Ara Pacis Augustae, the marble altar of the Augustan peace dedicated in 9 BC, whose reliefs show the imperial family in procession, and also stages temporary exhibitions.

The Leonardo da Vinci Museum is a privately run exhibition in the underground vaults of the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo, on Piazza del Popolo. It presents Leonardo's life, inventions, anatomical drawings and scientific studies through models and reproductions rather than original works, and includes a virtual-reality flight in his flying machine.

The Galleria Borghese is an art museum in the Villa Borghese Pinciana, a villa built by Flaminio Ponzio in the early 17th century for Cardinal Scipione Borghese. It shows his collection in its original rooms, with Bernini sculptures such as Apollo and Daphne and David, Canova's reclining Paolina Borghese, and paintings by Caravaggio, Raphael and Titian.

The Vatican Museums in Vatican City hold the art collections of the popes, begun by Pope Julius II in the early 16th century. The route leads through the classical sculptures of the Pio-Clementino Museum, the Gallery of Maps and the Raphael Rooms to the Sistine Chapel, whose ceiling and Last Judgement Michelangelo painted. About 20,000 of some 70,000 works are on display.

The National Etruscan Museum occupies Villa Giulia, the Renaissance villa built for Pope Julius III in 1551–1553. Its collection is devoted to the Etruscans and Faliscans of ancient central Italy and includes the terracotta Sarcophagus of the Spouses from Cerveteri and the Apollo of Veii, shown in rooms around the villa's courtyards and nymphaeum.

Cinecittà is the film studio complex on Via Tuscolana, opened in 1937, where productions from Ben-Hur to Fellini's films were shot. Visitors enter by the historic gate to Cinecittà si Mostra, exhibitions on the studios' history and on film crafts in the Palazzina Presidenziale and Palazzina Fellini, and can join guided tours of the ancient Rome set.