Capitoline Museums - Conservatory Palace and New Palace

The Capitoline Museums constitute the main municipal civic museum of Rome and are part of the «System of museums in common». They use an exhibition area of ??12,977 m².

Opened to the public in 1734, under Pope Clement XII, they are considered the first museum in the world, intended as a place where art could be enjoyed by everyone and not just by the owners.

We speak of "museums", in the plural, as the original collection of ancient sculptures was added by Pope Benedict XIV in the eighteenth century, the Pinacoteca, consisting of works illustrating mainly Roman subjects.

The historic seat of the Capitoline is made up of the Palazzo dei Conservatori and the Palazzo Nuovo, buildings that overlook Michelangelo's Piazza del Campidoglio.

The creation of the museum can be traced back to 1471, when Pope Sixtus IV donated to the city a collection of important bronzes from the Lateran (including the Capitoline Wolf), which he placed in the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori and on the Piazza del Campidoglio: this makes it the oldest public museum in the world.

The antiques collection was enriched over time with donations from various popes (Paul III, Pius V who wanted to expel pagan sculptures from the Vatican), and was better allocated with the construction of the Palazzo Nuovo in 1654.

The museum was open to public visits at the behest of Pope Clement XII almost a century later, in 1734. His successor, Benedict XIV, inaugurated the Capitoline Picture Gallery, acquiring the private collections of the Sacchetti and Pio family.

From the excavations carried out after the unification of Italy for the works of Rome capital, large quantities of new materials emerged, which, collected in the Municipal Archaeological Warehouse, later called Antiquarium, were over time partially exposed to the Capitoline.

In 1997 a branch office was opened in the former Giovanni Montemartini thermoelectric power station in the Ostiense district, creating an original solution of fusion between industrial and classical archeology.

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Added a new wing of the museum inaugurated in 2005 called the "exedra of Marcus Aurelius".

Today the Capitoline Museums are part of the system of museums in the municipality of Rome.

Map: Capitoline Museums - Conservatory Palace and New Palace