Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
famous she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of
Rome. The twins were not on the original Etruscan statue; they were added dur-
ing the Renaissance period in the 15th century.
Room 5
has Bernini's famously
pained portrait of
Medusa.
The rest of these rooms are less significant artistically,
so you can skim them without regret until you reach the stairway to the second-
floor picture gallery with several masterpieces, including Caravaggio's
John the
Baptist,
as well as Titian's
Baptism of Christ,
Tintoretto's
Penitent Madgalene,
and
Veronese's
Rape of Europa.
At the end of the picture gallery, head down to the ground floor and the
underground tunnel that will take you under the piazza to the
Palazzo Nuovo.
The vacant Tabularium, built to safely house Ancient Rome's city records, was
later used as a salt mine, and then as a prison.
Once inside the Palazzo Nuovo, start your tour in the open courtyard with the
statue of Marcus Aurelius, which stood for decades in the center of the Piazza del
Campidoglio outside. This section of the museum is dedicated to statues that
were excavated from the forums below and brought in from outlying areas like
Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli (p. 85). These statues are well marked and the floor plan
is very straightforward. The masterpieces here are the 1st-century Capitoline
Venus, in
Room 3,
and a chronologically arranged row of busts of Roman emper-
ors and their families. These rooms are often filled with students of art history
who study the busts for changes in sculpting techniques. The collection is perhaps
equally telling of changes in hairstyles and fashion during the Roman empire.
When you wander through these elegant, airy rooms, make sure you look out the
windows onto the city below. Here you get fresh views that are hard to come by.
These museums can be seen in a couple of hours, if you are pressed for time.
Or you can easily break them up around lunchtime and grab a sandwich at the
museum coffee bar. Your integrated ticket is good for multiple entrances for 3
days, so you can even revisit them.
Museo di Palazzo Venezia
There are a handful of significant exhibits at the
Museo di Palazzo Venezia
(Via
del Plebiscito, 118;
%
06-69994243;
€
4 adults,
€
2 seniors and students; daily
Centrale Montemartini
Before the year 2000 Jubilee celebrations in Rome, the Culture Ministry relocated
all the statues not displayed in the Capitoline museums to an abandoned electric-
ity warehouse outside the city gates, on Via Ostiense. Few believed the project
would take off, but the
Centrale Montemartini
5
9
(Via Ostiense, 106;
%
06-
5748030; www.museicapitolini.org;
€
4.80 or free with Capitoline Museum inte-
grated ticket; bus: 23 or 769)
has become one of the most provocative venues in
the city. The pristine statues, many of which had never been seen, were set against
shiny black machinery and the spruced-up antique gasworks. This is inarguable
proof of what Romans do best in the way of creating a visually stunning presenta-
tion out of abandoned ruins. This museum is a favorite of Italian school groups.
