Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

Next to the Pinacoteca is the Museo Gregoriano Profano, a grouping of museums in a modern building that holds more classical sculpture, mounted on scaffolds for all-round viewing, including mosaics of athletes from the Baths of Caracalla and Roman funerary work, notably the Haterii tomb friezes, which show backdrops of ancient Rome and realistic portrayals of contemporary life. It’s thought the Haterii were a family of construction workers and that they grabbed the opportunity to advertise their services by including reliefs of the buildings they had worked on (including the Colosseum), along with a natty little crane, on the funeral monument of one of their female members. The adjacent Museo Pio Cristiano has intricate primeval Christian sarcophagi and, most famously, an expressive third-century AD statue of the Good Shepherd. And the Museo Missionario Etnologico displays art and artefacts from all over the world, collected by Catholic missionaries, and seems to be inspired by the Vatican’s desire to poke fun at non-Christian cults as well as pat itself on the back for its own evangelical successes.

Tags: ancient rome, artefacts, baths of caracalla, catholic missionaries, christian cults, classical sculpture, colosseum, construction workers, female members, friezes, funeral monument, good shepherd, gregoriano, mosaics, museo pio cristiano, pinacoteca, realistic portrayals, reliefs, sarcophagi, scaffolds