Capitoline Museums

The Capitoline Museums (Musei Capitolini) crown the Capitoline Hill in central Rome and are generally regarded as the oldest public museums in the world, their collection dating to 1471 when Pope Sixtus IV donated a group of ancient bronzes to the people of Rome, and formally opened to the public in 1734 under Clement XII. The museums occupy two facing palaces — the Palazzo dei Conservatori and the Palazzo Nuovo — linked by an underground gallery beneath the Piazza del Campidoglio, the elegant trapezoidal square designed by Michelangelo in the 16th century. The collection is presented across antiquities, sculpture and a picture gallery, broadly thematic and chronological in arrangement. Its defining masterpiece is the original gilded-bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, displayed in a glazed hall (the Exedra) after being moved indoors for conservation, with a copy standing on the piazza outside. The Palazzo dei Conservatori holds the emblematic Capitoline Wolf, the bronze she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus that has become the symbol of Rome, together with the colossal fragments — head, hand and foot — of the statue of Constantine, the bronze Spinario (boy removing a thorn), and the Capitoline Brutus. The Palazzo Nuovo gathers a magnificent series of Roman portrait busts of emperors and philosophers and sculptures such as the Dying Gaul, the Capitoline Venus and the Marforio river god. The Pinacoteca Capitolina, the painting gallery, displays canvases by Caravaggio, Titian, Rubens, Guercino and others. Below ground, the Tabularium gallery — part of the ancient Roman records office — opens onto a sweeping panorama of the Roman Forum. Curatorially the museums balance the celebration of Rome's civic identity with a survey of classical sculpture and Baroque painting, set within historic interiors that are themselves part of the experience. Continuously enriched and conserved since the Renaissance, the Capitoline Museums remain a cornerstone of the city's cultural heritage.