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Capitoline Museums Rome
 The overall layout of the collection was altered in the second half of the XVI century, when the museum acquired an important group of sculptures following Pope Pius V's decision to rid the Vatican of "pagan" images: notable works of art increased the collections thereby adding an aesthetic dimension to their hitherto generally historical nature.
With the building of the Palazzo Nuovo on the other side of the square it became possible from 1654 onwards to house in a more satisfactory manner the large collection of works that had been gathering in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, by utilising part of the new building.
The Capitoline Museum, however, was only opened to the public during the course of the following century, after the acquisition, by Pope Clement XII, of a collection of statues and portraits of Cardinal Albani. Pope Clement inaugurated the Museum in 1734.
A few decades later, in the middle of the XVIII century, Pope Benedict XIV (who was responsible for the addition of fragments of the Forma Urbis from the Age of Severus, the largest marble street-plan of ancient Rome) founded the Capitoline Picture Gallery, which saw the conflation of two important collections, the Sacchetti and the Pio.
The collections were re-arranged by Rodolfo Lanciani at the beginning of the XX century, and following by more drastic intervention in 1925, when the Mussolini Museum (subsequently the Museo Nuovo) was set up in the newly-acquired Palazzo Caffarelli. It was there that works of sculpture which had previously been housed in the Antiquarium on the Caelian Hill, hitherto reserved for the so-called "minor arts", were moved.
In 1952 additional exhibition space, known as the Braccio Nuovo (New Wing), was created in a wing of Palazzo dei Conservatori.
In 1957, the Capitoline Museums' Junction Gallery was opened on occasion of the Third International Greek and Latin Epigraphy Congress. Built between 1939-41 to join the Capitoline buildings together, it became home to about 1,400 ancient Latin and Greek inscriptions, mostly originating from rooms in the city council's Antiquarium on the Caelian HIll, and in part from the Capitoline Museums themselves.
Serious problems of water seepage and rising damp eventually led to the Junction Gallery being closed to the public, with the rooms in the Museo Nuovo and the New Wing of the Palazzo dei Conservatori also being struck off the museum's itinerary.
In 1997, in order to make space in those areas which required renovation, sculptures from the Palazzo dei Conservatori, the Museo Nuovo and the New Wing were put on temporary display in the unusual exhibition area created in the old Acea power station on the Via Ostiense, known as the Montemartini Power Plant.
At the centre of the programme for the development of the Capitoline hill's historical, architectural and artistic resources, albeit with full respect for its traditional role as seat of political power, we find the development and re-structuring of the Museum areas.
The redevelopment project was entrusted to the Dardi and Einaudi studios while the Roman Garden is the responsibility of architect Carlo Aymonino. The project aimed at the creation of a complex and fully-integrated Museum circuit, with the opening of new exhibition areas alongside the reorganisation of some of the existing sectors and the opening of some sections hitherto closed to the public.
The exhibition area has been considerably increased with the opening to the public of the Tabularium, linked to other buildings by means of the Galleria di Congiunzione, the reorganisation of Palazzo Caffarelli and the acquisition of Palazzo Clementino, once an office block.
The museum itinerary has been enriched by the addition of new sections: the Capitoline Coin Cabinet in Palazzo Clementino and the Galleria Lapidaria in the Galleria di Congiunzione.
Further renovation work concerns the transformation of the Giardino Romano (Roman Garden) into a large glass covered hall and the reorganisation of the Castellani Collection, the halls of the Roman Horti and the section dedicated to the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter.
Address
Piazza del Campidoglio, 1 - 00186 ROMA
Informations and reservations
06 82059127 every day 9.00-19.30
Charges
Ordinary entrance tickets
Ordinary euro 6,50 (+ euro 1,50 exhibition)
Reduced euro 4,50 (+ euro 1,50 exhibition)
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