History Museums in Rome

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Explore artistic and historical treasures from some of the world's greatest artists

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From ancient Rome to Michelangelo, find Italian treasures at the Capitoline Museum

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Just between Piazza Navona and the Tiber River, Palazzo Altemps is a beautiful late-15th-century palazzo. Now one of the branches of the National Roman Museum, it was originally built for Girolamo Riario, a nephew of Pope Sixtus IV (who was a keen practitioner of nepotism). The building changed hands a number of times throughout the centuries, before being gifted to the Italian State in 1982. It then underwent 15 years of restoration work, and was inaugurated as a museum in 1997.

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The National Etruscan Museum is a magnificent Renaissance palace built for Pope Julius III between 1550 and 1555. Surrounded by beautiful gardens, the museum collection is devoted to the Etruscan civilization. The terracotta funerary monuments and the sarcophagi from the 5th century BC are among the highlights of the collection. Located on the north side of the Villa Borghese, Villa Giulia is stunning inside and out.

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Learn about one of the oldest Jewish communities

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Check out this ancient Roman palace, now used by the Vatican

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Ruled at least since the 11th century by a Chapter, the Cathedral collects the material legacy of what history has produced over more than two millennia. The tour of the Anagni Cathedral Museum takes you back in time and begins in the Library and Chapter House, then winds its way through the premises of the Ancient Treasury with its medieval collection of superb Boniface wall hangings and the medieval Chapel of the Savior, until it reaches the Cathedral's basement. Here it is possible to see the Oratory of St. Thomas Becket, an ancient mithraeum with late 12th- to early 13th-century paintings, and the marvelous Crypt of St. Magnus, which houses one of the most important pictorial cycles of the Medieval West, both in terms of the themes covered and the level of preservation of the paintings. The tour ends with a visit to the Lapidarium, set up in the porticos of the ancient cloister, where marble with cosmatesque decorations and plutei belonging to the ancient 9th-century cathedral stand out.

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Get a chance to observe the kind of ships that the ancient Romans used for fishing

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No trip to Rome is complete without a visit to the glorious Ara Pacis Museum, where the ancient and contemporary worlds collide. The museum showcases the Emperor Augustus’s amazing ‘Altar of Peace’ wrapped inside a magnificent travertine and glass blanket designed by contemporary architectural maestro Richard Meier.