The Romans have been busy renovating and restoring the city's palaces, villas and museums, reopening four within the past few months.
Rome is filled with museums celebrating everything from pasta to souls in purgatory, but it is most famous for its many art museums, many of them housed in palaces and villas that are works of art themselves.
Palazzo Barberini, home of the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Antica, was built in 1623, at the direction of Pope Urbano VIII. Some of Rome’s most important Renaissance architects had a hand in it: Maderno, Bernini, Borromini and Piero da Cortona. The art gallery contains such works as Raphael’s La Fornarina, Lorenzo Lotto’s The Mystic Wedding of St. Catherine and Caravaggio’s Judith and Oloferne, as well as porcelains and majolica work. To see the richly decorated apartments, it’s wise to book ahead, since the reopening has received a lot of publicity locally and access is limited.
The 18th-century Museo di Villa Torlonia, in the park of the same name, has reopened on the main floor of the Casino Nobile, built as a prince’s residence. The Museo della Scuola Romana (modern Roman art) occupies the second floor of this architectural gem. Of interest to World War II buffs, this beautifully decorated palace was Mussolini’s headquarters from 1925 to 1943, and it still has the two bunkers built to protect him from air raids and gas attacks. Also worth seeing while on the villa’s grounds is the Museum of Casina delle Civette, outstanding for its Art Nouveau stained glass windows created between 1908 and 1930.
The Barracco Museum, off Campo de’ Fiori, has reopened its collections, now with multimedia exhibits interpreting the more than 400 sculptures from Egypt, Greece, Rome, Phoenicia, Cyprus and other ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean. The collection is housed in the Piccola Farnesina on Corso Vittoro Emanuele.
Modern art from various countries is featured in the new exhibit halls of the recently re-opened Casino dei Giochi d’Acqua in Villa Borghese, right in the city center. The collections are a gift of the Italian-American collector, Carlo Bilotti, and include works by Andy Warhol and other important names in modern art. Along with its permanent collection, the museum mounts special interpretive exhibitions of modern masterpieces.
For more information on these and other museums in Rome, visit the website of the Rome Tourist Office. Remember that most of Rome’s museums are closed on Monday, and that opening hours vary widely.
