The museums of Rome

A quick guide to the top museums in Rome, Italy

The Vatican Museums

- Rome's most magnificent collection of museums includes—among many, many other things—Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, the Raphael Rooms, exquisite ancient Roman sculptures, and a painting gallery stuffed with works by Leonardo da Vinci, Giotto, Caravaggio, Raphael, Fra' Angelico, and many more....» Full Story

Sights By Category
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Capitoline Museums

- Stuffed with ancient statues and mosaics and Renaissance and baroque masterpieces by Caravaggio, Rubens, Titian, Bernini, and Tintoretto, the twinned Capitoline Museums are home to such Rome icons as the archetype statue of the she-wolf suckling the twins Romulus and Remus, Lo Spinaro (boy picking thorn out of foot), the Dying Gaul, and those gargantuan marble head, hands, and feet you see on all the postcards (usually with a cat posing on them).... » Full Story

Museo Palatino

- Atop the Palatine Hill, this is an excellent collection of Roman sculpture and finds from the ongoing digs in the surrounding Palatine palazzi.... » Full Story

Galleria Borghese

- Rome's Galleria Borghese in the middle of the city's largest park is packed with amazing works by Bernini, Caravaggio, and Raphael, and ranks as one of my top three small museums in the world.... » Full Story

Galleria Doria Pamhilj

- This private art collection of the Doria Pamhilj princes is now open to the public, the layout preserved more or less as it was in the 19th century: jumbled together as a giant jigsaw of works by Tintoretto, Caravaggio, Bernini, Titian, Correggio, Bellini, Rubens, and more.... » Full Story

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica: Palazzo Barberini

- When a Barberini finally made pope (Urban VIII), his fabulously wealthy family celebrated by hiring Carlo Maderno to build them a huge palace, later embellished by Borromini and Bernini. It houses half of Rome's National Gallery of paintings (the other half's in Trastevere’s Palazzo Corsini), with masterpieces by Caravaggio and Raphael backed by baroque frescoes by Pietro da Cortona.... » Full Story

Museo Nazionale Romano: Palazzo Altemps

- The Palazzo Altemps branch of the Rome National Museum is perhaps the prettiest of the four branchs (the other three are all up near Termini), with loads of excellent ancient sculptures and other Roman art installed in the frescoed rooms of a 16th-century palace just off the north end of Piazza Navona... » Full Story

Castel Sant'Angelo

- The pope's personal fortress is a giant cylinder of a castle glowering above the Tiber and hiding at its core the tomb of Hadrian and a dozen other ancient Roman emperors.... » Full Story

The Catacombs

- Not museums as such, but these miles of low, dimly lit tunnels carved into the soft tufa honeycomb the earth beneath the Via Appia Antica are wildly popular among tourists. The catacomb tunnels are pigeonholed with tens of thousands of niches where early Christians buried their dead and left some of the world's first Christian art.... » Full Story

The Farnesina

- Baldassare Peruzzi built this modestly sized but sumptuously decorated villa for banking mogul Agostino Chigi in 1508–11, who had particularly good taste in artists and hired Raphael, Sodoma, and Peruzzi to decorate the interior of his new villa.... » Full Story

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica: Palazzo Corsini

- This 15th-century palace houses the original half of Rome's National Gallery of paintings (the other half's in the Palazzo Barberini, near Via Veneto). The paintings are hung sort of all squished together, but its worth a visit for such big names as Raphael, Caravaggio, Fra' Angelico, Guido Reni, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Guercino.... » Full Story
Museo Nazionale Romano: Palazzo Massimo alle Terme - The best of the four branches of the Rome National Museum contains excellent statuary plus exquisite ancient Roman mosaics, bronzes, frescoes, coins, and jewelry in a 19th-century villa.... » Full Story

Museo Nazionale Romano: Baths of Diocletian - Installed in the palazzo that was converted out of a portion of the ancient baths complex; intriguing space, but least interesting of the Rome National Museum's four collections.... » Full Story

Museo Nazionale Romano: Aula Ottgona - A single echoing chamber of the Baths of Diocletian complex (but with a competley seperate entrance than the collection mentioned above, also part of the Rome National Museum) has been filled with a small but mighty bathhouse art and colossal statuary; amazingly evocative space.... » Full Story