The Borghese Gallery is the museum that contains the Soul of Rome, "the wonderful confusion of the Borghese" as it was defined by Francis Haskell in the 1900s. It was built between 1605 and 1620 by Scipione Borghese, the Cardinal nephew of Paolo V Borghese, to house the family’s private collection of statues and paintings. Scipione Borghese was a rich man and voracious collector, and with his strong and capable eye for beauty he is immortalized in his art collection.
Among the many masterpieces present are six works by Caravaggio, such as the Madonna dei Palafrenieri and David, early sculptures by Bernini such as Apollo and Daphne and the Rape of Persephone, the Baglioni altarpiece by Raphael, Danae by Correggio, Diana Hunting by Domenichino, and Sacred and Profane Love by Titian.

Palma Bucarelli's dream that became a reality between 1942 and 1975. Today completely transformed by Cristiana Collu into a more contemporary space, the National Gallery boasts a collection of almost 20,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations. The works represent the main artistic currents of the last two centuries, from Neoclassicism to Impressionism, from Divisionism to the historical Avant- gardes, from Futurism and Surrealism to works of Italian artists between
the 1920s and 1940s, from the 20th century movement to the so-called Roman School. A journey into modern and contemporary art, through a dreamlike and spiritual space.

Built in 1887 as the new headquarters of the Jesuit College, the building was purchased by the Italian state in 1998 and opened to the public. Its four floors include some of the greatest masterpieces of the Roman world: sculptures, reliefs, frescoes, mosaics, stuccos and sarcophagi, all originating from the excavations carried out in and around Rome beginning in 1870. On the entrance level and the first floor we find masterpieces of Greco- Roman statuary: the Niobid from the Horti Sallustiani, a Greek original in marble; the only bronze statues in Rome, the Boxer of the Baths and the Hellenistic Prince, found in the Baths of Constantine; and copies of famous sculptures like Mirone's Discobolus, present in the two reproductions of Lancellotti's Discobolus or the sleeping Hermaphrodite. The second floor is dedicated entirely to frescoes, stuccos and mosaics. Superb are the wall decorations, such as those from the Villa of Livia in Prima Porta, the Farnesina Villa in Trastevere, and the Villa of Termini.

Aristocratic residence built in the 15th century according to the will of Girolamo Riario, nephew of Pope Sixtus IV. In 1568 the building was purchased by the Austrian Cardinal Marco Sittico Altemps, nephew of Pope Pius IV. At the end of the 19th century the building was sold again to the Holy See, which assigned it to the Pontifical Spanish College. In 1982 it was finally purchased by the Italian state and transformed into a public art museum. Palazzo Altemps houses absolute masterpieces of ancient sculpture, such as statues and reliefs from the collections of the Altemps,
Boncompagni Ludovisi, Mattei, and Del Drago families, as well as the Jandolo, Veneziani, and Brancaccio sculptures, the Egyptian collection, and the famous Pallavicini Rospigliosi frescoes.

The Baths of Diocletian form a monumental complex that is unique in the world for its size and exceptional state of preservation. The baths were built between 298 and 306 AD and extended over an area of 13 hectares between the Viminal and Quirinal hills. The complex could hold up to 3,000 people and consisted of a calidarium, tepidarium, frigidarium, and a vast room for cold baths (now recognizable in the Basilica of S. Maria degli Angeli). There was even a natatio, a huge 4,000 square meter outdoor swimming pool. Emperor Maximian oversaw the construction of the baths and dedicated them to Diocletian. As the inscription originally posted at the entrance recalls, it was the last great act of imperial propaganda,. After about a thousand years of neglect, Pope Pius IV entrusted Michelangelo in 1561 with the project to transform the ancient Baths into a church and a charterhouse. The church was dedicated to the Madonna of the Angels and the Christian Martyrs. Michelangelo’s designs incorporated the tepidarium, frigidarium and part of the natatio into the church, while the rooms of the charterhouse occupied the northern part of the thermal complex. Today the National Roman Museum boasts one of the richest and most important collections of inscriptions in the world, with a patrimony of about 20,000 artifacts. Founded at the end of the nineteenth century, the Museum of Protohistory of the Latin Peoples is located on the first floor of the Cloister of Michelangelo. It illustrates the development of the Lazio culture from the end of the 11th century BC to the beginning of the sixth century BC, as communities transformed from tribal to urban.

The historic palace of the Barberini family was built by Carlo Maderno, Francesco Borromini and GianLorenzo Bernini in the 17th century. In 1953 Palazzo Barberini became the seat of the National Gallery of Ancient Art. The collection presents a chronological and representative layout of the main pictorial schools from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
The core of the collection is formed by works from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with masterpieces by Raphael, Piero di Cosimo, Bronzino, Hans Holbein, Lorenzo Lotto, Tintoretto, Caravaggio and his followers known as the Caravaggeschi, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Guido Reni,
Guercino, Nicolas Poussin, and Pietro da Cortona. The eighteenth-century collection contains important works by Maratti, Batoni, Canaletto, Subleyras, Mengs and van Wittel; as well as the paintings donated by the Duke of Cervinara, with the refined canvases of Fragonard and Boucher, and those of the Lemme donation, with rare sketches by Corvi and Ghezzi.

The history of Palazzo Corsini begins in 1511 with Cardinal Raffaele Riario. The original building was then modified between 1659 and 1689 when Queen Christina of Sweden made it her home. A woman of great culture and a lover of the arts, she revamped the interiors to house her collection
of statues on the ground floor and her picture gallery on the 1st floor.
Only in 1736 did the ownership of the building pass to the Corsini family after the election of Pope Clement XII Corsini. The very wealthy Florentine family needed a permanent residence in Rome, so they commissioned the architect Ferdinando Fuga to design a wing mirroring the existing building with a monumental staircase and a vast garden that rises up to the Janiculum Hill, today the Botanical Gardens of Rome. The Corsinis used the palace until 1883, and the Corsini Gallery is the only Roman picture gallery from the eighteenth-century that remains practically unchanged to this day.
 The collections were created thanks to the contributions of various members of the family, including Pope Clement XII and cardinal nephew Neri Maria. The latter expanded the collection, looking to masters such as Caravaggio, Reni, Guercino, Rubens, and van Wittel. During the nineteenth century the original collection was enriched thanks to numerous acquisitions from the Torlonia, Chigi, Monte di Pieta, and Hertz collections.

For centuries Palazzo Doria Pamphilj has housed a unique private collection. It is not only the quality and value of these masterpieces that amazes, but also their number: the works are so numerous that they completely cover the walls of the reception rooms, the long halls of the splendid Gallery, and the private apartments. It is impossible to describe the entire collection here in detail. In addition to Italian artists known all over the world, such as Caravaggio, Tiziano, Raffaello, Carracci and Bernini, also represented here are the Flemish masters of the Baroque era, a real flagship of the Doria Pamphilj collection, as well as the master of French landscapes Claude Lorrain and the most representative Spanish artist of the Baroque era, Diego Velàzquez.

From 1300 to 1500 Palazzo Colonna was a family fortress; Oddone Colonna, elected Pope Martin V in 1417, destined the palace to the seat of the papacy and lived there from 1420 to the year of his death in 1431. Pope Martin V brought about the cultural, urban and administrative rebirth of the city of Rome after the Avignon captivity and the Western Schism. In 1527, during the Sack of Rome by Emperor Charles V, Palazzo Colonna was among the few buildings that was not set on fire. During the 1600s, it assumed the guise of a large Baroque palace at the behest of Philip I, Cardinal Girolamo I and Lorenzo Onofrio thanks to the vision of architects and artists such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Antonio del Grande, Carlo Fontana, and Paolo Schor. The construction of the splendid and majestic Galleria Colonna, which overlooks Via IV Novembre for 76 meters, also dates back to 1600; it is an authentic jewel of the Roman Baroque. The apartments house the family’s art collection, where you can admire masterpieces by the greatest Italian and foreign artists between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Among the many important works are Pinturicchio, Cosmè Tura, Carracci, Guido Reni, Tintoretto, Salvator Rosa, Bronzino, Guercino, Veronese, and Vanvitelli.

In 1471 Pope Sixtus IV solemnly donated several ancient bronze statues (the She-wolf, the Spinario, the Camillus and the colossal head of Constantine, with the globe and hand) to the Roman people, and the first nucleus of the Capitoline Museums was born. In short, the original nucleus was enriched by subsequent acquisitions of finds from urban excavations and closely connected with the history of ancient Rome. In the mid- sixteenth century, significant works of sculpture were placed in the Campidoglio the gilded bronze statue of Hercules from the Forum Boarium, the marble fragments of the acrolith of Constantine from the Basilica of Maxentius, three relief panels with the exploits of Marcus Aurelius, the so-called Capitoline Brutus, among others, along with important inscriptions like the Fasti Capitolini, found in the Roman Forum. The two colossal statues of the Tiber and the Nile, currently outside the Palazzo Senatorio, were transferred from the Quirinal in the same years, while the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius was brought from the Lateran in 1538 at the behest of Pope Paul III. The Capitoline Museum, however, was only opened to the public in the following century, following Pope Clement XII ‘s acquisition of the collection of statues and portraits of
Cardinal Albani in 1734. A couple decades later, Benedict XIV founded the Capitoline Chapel, where two important private collections, the Sacchetti and the Pio, converged.

The Centrale Montemartini, the second exhibition center of the Capitoline
 Museums, is an extraordinary example of the conversion of an industrial archeology building—the first public plant in Rome for the production of electricity—into a museum. The history of the museum begins in 1997: to free up the areas undergoing renovations in the Capitoline Museums, the sculptures were temporarily transferred to the former ACEA power plant on the Via Ostiense, the Centrale Montemartini. The vast spaces of the Centrale Montemartini, punctuated by the gigantic surviving machinery, were considered more than ever suitable for experimenting with new museographic solutions. Two diametrically opposed worlds, archeology and industrial archeology, were brought together for the first time through a courageous staging. In brief, a game of contrasts between the Machines and the Gods, which became the title of the exhibition that opened to the public in October 1997. The interest of the public and professionals attracted by such a daring combination consolidated the validity of the new exhibition space, so much that in 2001 it passed from a temporary experiment to a permanent site: the Museo della Centrale Montemartini. In November 2016, following some renovations, the museum was expanded with the opening of a new room that houses the famous carriages of Pius IX’s train.

The Casino dell'Aurora is a loggia built for Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1612-1613) by the Flemish architect Giovanni Vasanzio. The central body of the façade opens onto the vast central hall where the magnificent fresco of "Aurora" by Guido Reni decorates the vaulted ceiling. In the same room are the "Triumph of Fame" and the "Triumph of Love" by Antonio Tempesta, the cardinal’s coat of arms and cherubs by Cherubino Alberti, the "Four Seasons" by Paul Bril, as well as seventeenth-century marble busts and Roman-era sculptures including the famous "Artemis the huntress" and "Athena Rospigliosi". The two side rooms, whose vaults are frescoed with the "Combat between Rinaldo and Armida" by Passignano and the "Tale of Armida" by Baglione, house paintings from the extraordinary Pallavicini Collection.