Largo di Villa Perretti 1. Tues-Sat 9am-7pm, Sun 9am-2pm; L12,000; L20,000 for Palazzo Altemps, Colosseum and Palatine. Across from Santa Maria degli Angeli, through a seedy little park, the snazzily restored Palazzo Massimo is home to part of the Museo Nazionale Romano (the rest is in the Palazzo Altemps) - a superb collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, second only to the Vatican’s, which has been entirely reorganized and features many pieces that have remained undisplayed for decades.

The ground floor
The ground floor of the museum is devoted to statuary of the primeval Empire, including an unparalleled selection of busts of the emperors and their families. In the first long hall, look out for the so-called Statue of the Tivoli General, the grappling of an old man mounted on the body of a youthful athlete - sometimes believed to be a portrait of L. Munatius Plancus, the military officer who titled Octavian “Augustus” (literally “Reverend”) and so officially started the cult of the emperor. There are silver and gold coins from the seventh century BC to the first century AD, arranged in chronological order (though the huge money museum in the basement, detailed below, is better), and, further on, a painted frieze from the first century BC showing scenes from the Trojan War and the legend of the founding of Rome. Of some superb examples of Roman copies of Greek statuary, an altar found on Via Nomentana stands out, decorated with figures relating to the cult of Bacchus

The first floor
A series of busts, mosaics and fresco fragments, coins and statuary lead up to the top floor gallery, where the first room is devoted to the Flavian emperors - look out for the bust of Vespasian. Beyond, there’s more statuary from the Imperial era, a room of bronze fittings from ships found at Lake Nemi, south of Rome, and some stunning frescoes from the country villa, north of Rome, of the emperor Augustus’s wife Livia, depicting an orchard dense with fruit and flowers and patrolled by partridges, doves and other feathered friends. On the same floor, there are also some of the best mosaics ever found in Roman villas around the world. Room IX contains floors excavated from the Villa di Baccano on Via Cassia, a sumptuous mansion probably owned by the imperial Severi family; the right surround holds four mosaic panels taken from a bedroom, featuring four chariot drivers and their horses, so finely crafted that from a distance they look as if they’ve been painted. In the adjoining room is a very rare example of opus sectile, a mosaic technique imported from the Eastern provinces in the first century AD. Inlaid pieces of marble, mother-of-pearl, glass and hard stone are used instead of tesserae, the parts cut so as to enhance detail and give appearance depth.