Anxious To See Museums In Your Rome Tour? Here Are 8 Favorites!
Museo Nazionale Romano – Crypta Balbi (Roman National Museum – Crypta Balbi). This is perhaps the most recent museum in Rome (it was opened in the year 2000), but undoubtedly one of the most interesting. It provides a birds eye-view panorama of living conditions in ancient Rome, up to the Middle Ages. Exhibits include many household items found during excavations as well as a number of coins, marble inscriptions and various documents of particular historical significance.
Musei Capitolini (Capitoline Museums). Museums are often especially made to house ancient works of art, but when they are centuries old themselves there is obviously additional charm for visitors to relish. This is the case with the Capitoline Museums, located on top of the Capitoline Hill in Rome. The art collections of ancient statues, jewels, coins and Roman remains are as impressive as the unique view of the city that you can enjoy from the Capitoline Hill, which is literally in the centre of Rome.
Galleria Borghese (Borghese Gallery). Located inside the park by the same name, this is one of the most interesting museums in Rome. Its ground floor houses a collection of ancient statues and renowned sculptures by Bernini and Canova. Among the most celebrated of these works we might mention Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne and Canova’s Venus Victrix, representing Pauline Bonaparte. On the upper floor you will find famous paintings by Raphael, Titian, Botticelli, Caravaggio, Bernini, Canova and Rubens. Caravaggio’s Boy with a Basket of Fruit, Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love and Raphael’s Entombment of Christ are only some of the masterpieces on show.
Museo della Civilta Romana (Museum of the Roman Civilization). It is difficult to imagine a museum that may encompass the whole span of Roman civilization from its very start up to the 4th century (in other words, the complete story of the rise and decline of Rome). Yet, this is exactly the period of time covered by the exhibits at this museum. Of its three sections, the first one shows all the main stages of Roman history, the second one concentrates on all major themes of historical, social and religious interest and the third contains a model of the city of Rome in the 4th century A.D. Among other interesting exhibits you will find horizontal casts of the reliefs of Trajan’s Column.
Mercati di Traiano (Trajan’s Markets). This site is considered one of the best of its kind in the world. The reason is that the markets are located over an area that over the centuries has been destined to the most varied types of use. It has served as a market, an administrative centre, a residential area, a stronghold, a convent and military quarters. The archaeological work has been integrated with a careful layout and arrangement of the findings in order to describe as closely as possible the several uses to which it had been put.
Museo di Roma in Trastevere (Museum of Rome in Trastevere). This museum was opened 32 years ago to collect many paintings, prints and watercolors made between the latter half of the 18th century and the end of the following century. The overall picture of the city that you will gather from a visit to the museum will probably surprise you. The pre-industrial Rome was a picturesque, colorful city that had little to share with the bustling city you will notice all around you at present. The general arrangement of the museum is intended to reconstruct scenes of daily living in the Trastevere area of Rome. Among other exhibits, there are copies of some so-called “talking statues”. These statues were used by the Roman populace to pin leaflets containing biting lampoons and sharp criticism of Government officials and their administration.
Museo di Roma (Museum of Rome). Founded in 1930, the purpose of the museum was twofold: to link the increasingly more forward-looking city of Rome with its past and to ensure that ample evidence of its past be collected and handed down to posterity. You will find that the collection of works of art, ceramics, costumes, paintings, photographs, furniture and even trains and carriages illustrates the significant changes that have marked the life of the city from the Middle Ages right up to half-way through the 20th century. Obviously, the paintings and sketches will provide an ongoing description of the changes that affected the architectural structure of the city itself as well as the surrounding countryside.
Museo Barracco (Barracco Museum). This museum was set up to exhibit a collection of ancient sculptures donated by a Calabrian nobleman to the city of Rome in 1904. This incredibly varied collection includes statues coming from the Middle East (Assyrian and Phoenician), in addition to Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan and Roman masterpieces. The building housing the museum is a very elegant building dating from the Renaissance, considered an excellent example of that particular style.
