Capitoline Museums

Lonely Planet review

Boasting some of ancient Rome's most spectacular sculpture, the Capitoline Museums (Musei Capitolini) are quite magnificent. The world's oldest national museums, they date to 1471, when Pope Sixtus IV donated a number of bronze statues to the city, forming the nucleus of what is now one of Italy's finest collections of classical art. The collection is today beautifully housed in Palazzo Nuovo and Palazzo dei Conservatori on Piazza del Campidoglio.

The main entrance is in Palazzo dei Conservatori, where you'll find the original core of the sculptural collection and, on the 2nd floor, an art gallery with a number of important works.

Before you head upstairs, though, take a moment to admire the ancient masonry littered around the ground-floor courtyard, most notably a mammoth head, hand and foot. These all come from a 12m-high statue of Constantine that originally stood in the Basilica di Massenzio in the Roman Forum.

Of the sculpture on the 1st floor, the Etruscan Lupa Capitolina (Capitoline Wolf) is the most famous and the Spinario, a delicate 1st-century-BC bronze of a boy removing a thorn from his foot is another crowd pleaser.

On the 2nd floor the Pinacoteca (art gallery) contains paintings by such heavyweights as Titian, Tintoretto, Reni, van Dyck and Rubens.

Palazzo Nuovo on the other side of the square is crammed to its elegant rafters with classical Roman sculpture. Highlights include the graceful Venere Capitolina (Capitoline Venus), the Galata Morente (Dying Gaul), the 5th-century-BC Amazzone Ferita (Wounded Amazon), and a marble Satiro in Riposo (Resting Satyr)