Page 54 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Rome

52  INTRODUCING ROME

Exploring Museums and Galleries

Rome’s museums and galleries have two major strengths:
Greek and Roman archaeological treasures, and paintings
and sculptures of the Renaissance and the Baroque periods.
The Vatican Museums have superb collections of both, as do,
on a smaller scale, the Capitoline Museums. Fine paintings
can also be found scattered throughout Rome in museums,
galleries, and churches (see pp48–9).

figurines, and artifacts are relics
of the Faliscans, Latins, and Centurion’s breastplate, Museo della
other tribes who inhabited Civiltà Romana
central Italy before the Romans.
The Gregorian Etruscan Francesca Romana, is the
Museum in the Vatican Antiquarium Forense with
Museums was opened in 1837 restored finds from the
to house Etruscan finds from excavations. For those who enjoy
tombs on Church-owned land. history, the large-scale model at
The Museo Barracco in the the Museo della Civiltà Romana
Piccola Farnesina has statues in EUR gives an excellent idea of
from the much older civilizations what ancient Rome looked like
of ancient Egypt and Assyria. in the 4th century AD.

Ancient Roman Art
The archaeological zone in
Rome forms a huge open-air
museum of evidence of ancient
Roman life, while the porticoes
and cloisters of the city’s
churches are filled with ancient
5th-century BC Etruscan gold plate with sarcophagi and fragments of
inscription, Villa Giulia statuary. The largest important
collection can be seen in the
Etruscan Artifacts Museo Nazionale Romano at
the Baths of Diocletian and the
The Etruscans inhabited an Palazzo Massimo. The museum’s
area stretching from Florence many ancient artifacts include,
to Rome from the 8th most notably, a sarco-
century BC, and ruled phagus from Livia’s Villa
Rome from the late 7th at Prima Porta just north
century BC (see pp20–21). of Rome. Also on display are Muses in Raphael’s Parnassus (1508–11),
It was the Etruscan custom some wonderfully well- Vatican Museums
to bury the dead along with preserved mosaics. The
their possessions, and as a museum’s great collection of
result, Etruscan artifacts have Roman statues is now housed Art Galleries
been excavated from tombs in the Palazzo Altemps. The In the past, many of Rome’s
all over central Italy. Three most venerated statues are great aristocratic families owned
main collections can be seen in the Vatican Museums, magnificent private collections
in Rome. The Villa Giulia has which also have the best of of paintings and sculpture.
been the home of the Museo the great Greek works, such Some of these are still housed
Nazionale Etrusco since 1889. as the Laocoön and His Sons, in ancestral palazzi, which are
The villa, designed by Vignola brought to Rome around open to the public. One is the
for Pope Julius III for summer the 1st century AD. It had Galleria Doria Pamphilj, which
outings, is one of Rome’s tremendous influence on the has the greatest concentration
prettiest Renaissance subsequent development of of paintings of any palazzo in
buildings. Its gardens contain Roman art. Splendid copies Rome. It is well worth searching
a reconstructed Etruscan of Greek originals can be seen through the various rooms to
temple. Not all objects in the Capitoline Museums. find the pearls of the collection,
here are Etruscan, In the Forum, which include works by
however; some of Victory banner, Museo della occupying two floors Raphael, Filippo Lippi,
the pottery, Civiltà Romana of the church of Santa Caravaggio, Titian, and Claude

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