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... » more

Museums near the Forum and Colosseum

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 Spinario (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)... » more

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... » more

Museums in the Historic Center (near Piazza Navona, the Spanish Steps, and Via Veneto)

Bernini's Apollo & Daphne at the Borghese Gallery in Rome

Galleria Borghese ★★

Rome's Galleria Borghese in the middle of the city's largest park is a frescoed 1613 villa packed to the gills with amazing works by Bernini, Caravaggio, and Raphael—not to mention ancient statuary—and ranks as one of my top three small museums in the world. Warning: Entry is on timed tickets which you must book ahead of time (and it can sell out days in advance)... » more

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.... » more

A sarcophagus at the Palazzo Altemps branch of the Rome National Museum

Museo Nazionale Romano: Palazzo Altemps ★

The Palazzo Altemps branch of the Rome National Museum is perhaps the prettiest of the four branches (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... » more

Ara Pacis ★

Augustus had his "Altar of Peace" built in 13 BC to celebrate the peace brought by his unification of the Empire. Though you can peer at it through the glass walls of its enclosure, it's worth the admission to go inside and examine up close the beautiful relief panels carved with mythological figures and long processions of prominent citizens from Rome's history—carvings that represent the point at which Roman art finally significantly broke from Greek models to make a strong, classical statement all its own... » more

Galleria Doria Pamphilj

This private art collection of the Doria Pamphilj 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... » more

Galleria Palazzo Spada

The 1540 Palazzo Spada has fabulous stuccoes on its facade and courtyard. While the painting gallery it houses is small, it represents one of the best examples of an intact 17th-century private collection, still displayed in rooms with their original furnishings and decor intact... » more

Museums in Trastevere & the Borgo

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... » more

Villa 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... » more

The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Palazzo Corsini, Rome

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... » more

Museo delle Anime del Purgatorio (Museum of Souls in Purgatory)

Proof that not everyone makes it to the afterlife on the first try... » more

Museums Near Termini train station

An ancient Roman sarcofagus in the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme branch of the Rome Naitonal Museum

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... » more

The Baths of Diocletian branch of the Rome Naitonal Museum

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... » more

The Aula Ottagona of the Rome National Museum

Museo Nazionale Romano: Aula Ottagona

[currently closed] A single echoing chamber of the Baths of Diocletian complex (but with a completely separate 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... » more

Museums Farther Afield

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... » more

Centrale Montemartini ★

The Acea Art Center is a bona fide deus ex macchina experience. They've prettied up the old Montemartini power plant to house over 400 gorgeous ancient Roman sculptures from the Capitoline Museums collections that haven't been seen by the public in decades. They’re displayed evocatively against a backdrop of the power plant's inky black iron machinery, much of it so massive and muscularly mechanical that it looks more like a metaphor of early industry than actual working devices, like it came from a Fritz Lang movie set... » more

Cinecittà ★

Rome's Cinecittà movie studios has grown to become a Mediterranean mini-Hollywood, the site of more than 3,000 productions from sword-and-sandals epics to spaghetti westerns, classic Fellini films to HBO miniseries... » more

Tips & links

Museum info

Tourist info:
www.turismoroma.it
City museums:
www.museiincomuneroma.it
Ancient sites:
archeoroma.beniculturali.it

Save with sight seeing pass

Look into the Roma Pass, Archeological Card, and other discounted passes and admission tickets. They're all detailed and compared on the Rome Discounts page. » more

How long does Rome take?

Planning your day: Rome wasn't built in a day, and you'd be hard-pressed to see it in that brief a time as well. Still, you can cram a lot into just a day or three.

To help you get the most out of your limited time in the Eternal City, here are some perfect itineraries, whether you have one, two, three, or four days to spend in Rome.

» Rome itineraries

Rome tours