Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
But an added advantage to this collection, over the much larger Vatican
Museums collection, is that curators insist on a limited number of people in the
museum at one time. You will never find yourself crowded here, and you are lim-
ited to a 2-hour visit, which is a perfect amount of time for sauntering through
the masterpieces.
Within the Villa Borghese are two other museums.
Museo Nazionale di Villa
Giulia
(Piazzale di Villa Giulia, 9;
%
06-3226571;
€
4; 8:30am-7:30pm)
features
Etruscan artifacts ranging from cooking utensils to jewelry in the central room of
the museum to a more intricate form of jewelry in the Room of the Seven Hills.
These collections have been exhumed from the graves of the Etruscans found in
central Italy. There is a reconstructed temple next to the coffee bar in the courtyard.
The second museum within the boundaries of the Villa Borghese is the
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (National Gallery of
Modern and Contemporary Art;
Viale delle Belle Arti, 131;
%
06-332981; www.
gnam.arti.beniculturali.it/gnamco.htm; adults
€
6.50, seniors and students
€
3.25; Tues-Sun 8:30am-7:30pm).
Its collections focus on the rarely noted 19th-
and 20th-century Italian art. There are massive statues like
Hercules
by Canova in
Room 4,
and the plaster model used to make the bronze statue of Giordano
Bruno, which stands in the center of Campo de' Fiori (p. 61). The museum is a
great diversion from the Renaissance and ancient art most visitors to Rome see,
and there is a delightful terrace coffee bar overlooking the lush green of the Villa
Borghese on the main floor. If you don't feel like going to another museum, just
come here for the coffee bar, which opens at 8am.
THE APPIAN WAY
To really enjoy the area immediately surrounding Ancient Rome's first major
road, the Appian Way
(
bus: 118, 218, 660, or 664), built in the 4th century, start
with the
Museo delle Mura
(Via di San Sebastiano, 18;
%
06-70475284;
€
2.60
adults;
€
1.60 seniors and students; Tues-Sun 9am-2pm),
where you can amble
down the top of a short expanse of the ancient fortification wall that surrounds
the center of Rome. Here are mostly exhibits of old photos and diagrams of the
wall's many gates and castles, but being inside the actual fortification wall gives
you a sense of its purpose, which was to protect the ancient city from invaders,
who mostly came via the Appian Way.
The Appian Way (Appia Antica on the street signs) originally extended well
within the walls, but now it officially begins here, at the Porta San Sebastiano.
Make your way down the busy first section until you reach the quiet lane where
the road forks between Via Appia Antica and Via Ardeatina in the direction of
Catacombs of San Callisto.
You can rent bicycles on the weekends just before
the fork from the
Centro Visite Parco Appia Antica
(Via Appia Antica, 42;
%
06-
5126314; www.parcoappiaantica.org;
€
3 for 1 hr. or
€
10 for the day; Sat-Sun
9:30am-4:30pm).
On this narrow lane that rises above both the Appia Antica on
the left and the Via Ardeatina on the right, you'll see farm fields and wildflowers,
and be less burdened by the traffic—though there are still taxis and tour buses
that use the road, but nothing like the traffic on the Appia Antica below. You can
also see the Castelli foothills outside of Rome and on clear days, you'll see much
of the city around you.
