Capitoline Museums Guided Small Group Tour

The world’s first public museum, founded in the late 15th century, the Capitoline Museum’s important collection is divided between two substantial buildings on the Piazza del Campidoglio.

The Palazzo Nuovo contains classical sculpture. Outstanding are the Dying Gaul (a Roman copy of a Greek 3rd-century BC bronze original), the Discobolus (a Greek discus thrower altered in the 18th century to create a wounded warrior) and the Capitoline Venus (copy of a 2nd-century BC Hellenistic original). The Sala degli Imperatori (Hall of the Emperors) takes its name from the busts of Roman emperors lining the walls; they once adorned the villas and gardens of ancient Rome.

The magnificent bronze equestrian statue (2nd century AD) of Marcus Aurelius, until recently outside in the piazza, is now inside the Palazzo Nuovo. Its original location was the piazza of the Lateran, often the scene of degradations inflicted on Roman citizens by the popes: in the 10th century Pope John XIII had the Prefect of Rome hung from the statue by his hair. Throughout the Middle Ages the figure on horseback was thought to represent Constantine, which may be the reason it was preserved, and by 1538 it was the only monumental classical bronze to have survived. Much revered, it was removed to the Piazza del Campidoglio from which it was taken for restoration in the 1980s.

The Palazzo dei Conservatori contains more classical sculpture. In the courtyard are fragments of the colossal statue of Constantine (4th century AD), and in the gallery are the Spinario (a 1st century BC bronze of a boy taking a thorn from his foot) and the Capitoline Wolf (Etruscan, 5th century BC). The figures of the suckling twins, Romulus and Remus, were added in 1498 by Antonio Pollaiuolo, a talented Florentine artist and goldsmith. The home of this statue, the early symbol of Rome, has always been the Capitoline; it was here in 65 BC that lightning damaged the wolfs hindquarters.

On the second floor is the Pinacoteca Capitolina, with paintings by Veronese, Guercino, Tintoretto, Rubens, Caravaggio, Van Dyck, Titian and Pietro da Cortona.