Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

Of the two Capitoline Museum buildings, it’s the Palazzo Nuovo (on the left) that really steals the show. Just inside the entrance is the original Marcus Aurelius statue, and the first floor concentrates some of the best of the city’s Roman copies of Greek sculpture into half a dozen or so rooms and a long room crammed with elegant statuary. There’s a remarkable, controlled statue of the Dying Gaul, a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original; a naturalistic Boy with Goose - another copy; an original grappling depiction of Eros and Psyche; a Satyr Resting, after a piece by Praxiteles, that was the inspiration for Hawthorne’s book the Marble Faun; and the red marble Laughing Silenus, another Roman copy of a Greek original. Walk through, too, to the so-called Sala degli Imperatori, with its busts of Roman emperors and other famous names, including a young Augustus, a cruel Caracalla, and a portrait of Helena, the mother of Constantine, reclining gracefully. And don’t miss the Capitoline Venus, housed in a room on its own - a coy, delicate piece, again based on a work by Praxiteles.

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