Capitoline Museums

The Capitoline Museums occupy the hill that was ancient Rome's sacred and political summit, and they have a strong claim to be the oldest public museum in the world: in 1471 Pope Sixtus IV gave a group of ancient bronzes to the people of Rome, and the collection grew from there. The setting alone is worth the climb. Michelangelo redesigned Piazza del Campidoglio in the sixteenth century, approached by his gently ramped staircase, the Cordonata, with the Senators' Palace at its head and two matching palaces facing each other across the oval pavement. The museums fill those two palaces, linked by an underground gallery. The highlights are some of the most famous objects of the ancient world: the original gilded bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, now protected indoors in a glass-roofed hall (a copy stands in the piazza); the Capitoline Wolf, the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus that became the city's emblem; the Dying Gaul, a marble of extraordinary pathos; the colossal head, hand and foot of a statue of Constantine in the courtyard; and the Spinario, the boy pulling a thorn from his foot. The picture gallery adds Caravaggio's Fortune Teller and St John the Baptist, along with Titian, Rubens and Guercino. And then there is the view: the underground passage leads into the Tabularium, the ancient record office, whose arcade looks straight down the length of the Roman Forum toward the Colosseum. It is one of the great sights of the city, and you see it in peace.

Allow two to three hours. A natural route begins in the Palazzo dei Conservatori with the courtyard of Constantine's fragments, the Spinario and the She-Wolf, the hall of Marcus Aurelius with the excavated foundations of the Temple of Jupiter, and the picture gallery upstairs, then takes the underground gallery to the Tabularium window, and finishes in the Palazzo Nuovo among the philosophers, emperors and the Dying Gaul. The rooftop café terrace of the Conservatori is a pleasant place to rest with a view over the domes. The museums are open daily, and because they are city-run rather than state-run, their pricing and free days differ from the national sites; residents of the Rome metropolitan area have entered free since February 2026, while visitors pay. Temporary exhibitions can raise the price.

Why it belongs on a first visit: after the Colosseum and Forum, the Capitoline explains what you have just seen, with the statues, inscriptions and portraits that once stood among the ruins, and it does so without the Vatican's crowds. Families find the giant marble foot and the wolf irresistible, and the hilltop setting has the open-air drama children enjoy. Art lovers get Caravaggio without the queue. Combination tickets on Tiqets link the museums with the Centrale Montemartini, the power station filled with ancient statues, and with other headliners.

Outside, do not miss the free viewpoints. Walk behind the Senators' Palace to the terraces on either side for the classic panorama over the Forum, best at sunset. On the other side of the hill, steep steps climb to Santa Maria in Aracoeli, and below sprawls the gleaming white Vittoriano, the monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, whose rooftop terrace (reached by a paid lift) gives a 360-degree view. From here it is a short walk to the Theatre of Marcellus and the Jewish Ghetto for lunch, or along the Forum to the Colosseum. Because the museums are open daily and rarely sell out, they also make an excellent backup on a rainy afternoon or a day when the Vatican is closed.