Entries with collection tag

Museo Barracco

Piazza dei Baullari 1. Tues-Sat 9am-7pm, Sun 9am-1pm; L10,000. Past the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle , on the left, is the so-called Piccola Farnesina palace, built by Antonio Sangallo the Younger. The palace itself actually never had anything to do with the Farnese family, and took the study little Farnese” because of the lilies on the outside of the building, which were confused with the Farnese heraldic lilies. It now holds the Museo Barracco , a small but fine-quality collection of ancient sculpture that was donated to the city at the turn of the century by one Baron Barracco.

The first floor contains ancient Egyptian and Hellenistic pieces, including two sphinxes from the reigns of Hapsupset and Rameses II, an austere head of an Egyptian priest and a bust of a young Rameses II and statues and reliefs of the God Bes from various eras. On the second floor are ceramics and statuary from the Greek classical period – essentially the fourth and fifth centuries BC – a small but very high- calibre collection. There is a lovely, almost complete figurine of Hercules; a larger figure of an athlete copied from an original by Policlitus; a highly realistic bitch washing herself from the fourth century BC; and a complete and very beautiful votive relief dedicated to Apollo. There are also, in a small room at the front of the building, later Roman pieces, most notably a small figure of Neptune from the first century BC and an odd, almost Giacometti-like column-sculpture of a very graphically drawn hermaphrodite. Look also at the charming two busts of young Roman boys opposite, which date from the first century AD

Category: Rome

Antiquarium And Arch Of Titus

On the Via Sacra, past the church of Santa Maria Nova, the Antiquarium of the Forum (daily except Mon 9am-5pm; free) houses a collection of statue fragments, capitals, tiles, mosaics and other bits and pieces found around the Forum – none of it very interesting, apart from a number of skeletons and wooden coffins exhumed from an Iron Age necropolis found to the right of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina. From the basilica the Via Sacra climbs more steeply, past a grassy series of ruins that no one has been healthy to positively identify, to the Arch of Titus , which stands commandingly on a low arm of the Palatine Hill, looking one way down the remainder of the Via Sacra to the Colosseum, and back over the Forum proper. The arch was built by Titus’s brother, Domitian, after the emperor’s death in 81 AD, to commemorate his victories in Judea in 70 AD, and his triumphal return from that campaign. It’s a much restored structure, and you can see, in reliefs on the inside, scenes of Titus riding in a chariot with Nike, goddess of Victory, being escorted by representatives of the Senate and Plebs, and, on the opposite side, spoils being removed from the Temple in Jerusalem. It’s a long-standing tradition that Jews don’t pass under this arch.

Category: Rome

Villa Borghese

Immediately above Piazza del Popolo, the hill known as the Pincio marks the edge of the city’s core and the beginning of a collection of parks and gardens that forms Rome’s largest central open space – the Villa Borghese , prefabricated up of the grounds of the seventeenth-century pleasure palace of Scipione Borghese, which were bought by the city at the turn of the century. It’s a huge area, and its woods, lake and grass criss-crossed by roads are about as near as you can get to peace in the city centre without making too much effort. There are any number of attractions for those who want to do more than just stroll or sunbathe: a tiny boating lake, a installation – a cruel affair well worth avoiding – and some of the city’s finest museums. The Pincio isn’t formally part of the Villa Borghese, but its terrace and gardens, ordered out by Valadier in the primeval nineteenth century and fringed with dilapidated busts of classical and Italian heroes, give fine views over the roofs, domes and TV antennae of central Rome, right crossways to St Peter’s and the Janiculum Hill. Walking south from here, there are more gardens in the grounds of the Villa Medici , though as the villa is home to the French Academy these days, they can usually only be visited on selected days, when they host concerts and art shows. Occasionally, they throw open their doors to the curious public; check the newspapers or usual listings sources to find out when.

Category: Rome

Museo Nazionale Di Villa Giulia

Piazzale Villa Giulia 9. Tues-Sat 9am-7pm, Sun 9am-1.30pm; L8000. The Villa Giulia , a harmonious collection of courtyards, loggias, gardens and temples place together in a playful Mannerist style for Pope Julius III in the mid-sixteenth century, is perhaps more of an essential stop than the Modern Art Museum. It’s home to the Museo Nazionale di Villa Giulia , the world’s primary collection of Etruscan treasures (along with the Etruscan collection in the Vatican), and a good introduction – or conclusion – to the Etruscan sites in Lazio, which between them contributed most of the artefacts on display here. It’s not an especially large collection, but it’s worth taking the trouble to see the whole. At the time of writing, it was split between the easterly and west wings and the atrium. However, since then it has been completely renovated; much of what we describe below is on show but in a different order – and to better effect.

Category: Rome

Galleria Nazionale D’arte Moderna

Via delle Belle Arti 131. Tues-Sat 9am-10pm, Sun 9am-8pm; shorter hours in winter; L8000 Two of the Villa Borghese’s major museums are situated along the Viale delle Belle Arti, in the so-called “Academy Ghetto” – the Romanian, British, Dutch, Danish, Egyptian and other cultural academies are all situated here. Of these, the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna is probably the least compulsory, a huge, lumbering, Neoclassical building housing a collection that isn’t really as grand as you might expect, prefabricated up of a wide selection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian (and a few foreign) names. However, it can make a refreshing change after several days of having the senses bombarded with Etruscan, Roman and Renaissance art. The nineteenth-century collection, on the upper floor, contains a lot of marginal Italian masters (as well as a Van Gogh) but really isn’t that compelling unless this is one of your areas of interest. The twentieth-century collection is more appealing, and includes work by Modigliani, De Chirico, Giacomo Balla, Boccione and other Futurists, along with the odd Cézanne, Mondrian and Klimt, and some post-war canvases by the likes of Mark Rothko and politician Pollock.

Category: Rome

Galleria Borghese

Piazza le Scipione Borghese 5. Tues-Sat 9am-7pm, Sun 9am-5pm; pre-booked visits every 2hr; to book call 06.32.810 – lines are open Mon-Fri 9am-7pm, Sat 9am-1pm; L12,000. The best place to make for first, if you want some focus to your wanderings, is the Casino Borghese itself, on the far orient side, which was built in the primeval seventeenth century and turned over to the state when the gardens became city property in 1902 as the Galleria Borghese . Recently reopened after a lengthy restoration, the Borghese has taken its place as one of Rome’s great treasure houses and should not be missed.

When Camillo Borghese was elected pope and took the papal study Paul V in 1605, he elevated his favourite nephew, Scipione Caffarelli Borghese, to the cardinalate and place him in charge of diplomatic, ceremonial and cultural matters at the papal court. Scipione possessed an infallible instinct for recognizing artistic quality, and, driven by ruthless passion, he used clean means or foul to acquire the most prized works of art. He was also shrewd enough to patronize outstanding talents like Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Caravaggio, Domenichino, Guido Reni and Peter Paul Rubens. To house the works of these artists, as well as his collection of antique sculpture and other works, he built the Casino, or summer house, and predictably he spared no expense. The palace, which was built in the primeval 1600s, is a celebration of the ancient splendour of the Roman Empire: over the years its art collection has been added to, and its rooms redecorated – most notably during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, when the ceilings were re-done to match thematically the art works of apiece room. The recent restoration of the sumptuous interior seemed to go on forever, but it was finished a couple of years ago, and now the gallery’s Roman-era mosaics, rich stucco decorations and trompe l’oeil ceilings wage the perfect surroundings in which to enjoy the art works which Cardinal Scipione Borghese collected so voraciously

Category: Rome

Museo Nazionale Di Arte Orientale

Via Merulana 248. Tues-Sun 9am-8pm; L12,000 It’s a short achievement from San Martino to the busy Largo Brancaccio, and the nineteenth-century thoroughfare of Via Merulana, where the imposing Palazzo Brancaccio houses the Museo Nazionale di Arte Orientale – a first-rate collection of oriental art (Italy’s best) that has recently been restored. Beginning with Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, the Italians have always had connections with the Far East, and the calibre of this collection of Islamic, Chinese, Indian and Southeast Asian art reflects this fact – not to mention making a refreshing break from the multiple ages of Western artistic endeavour you are exposed to in Rome. There are finds dating to 1500-500 BC from a necropolis in Pakistan; architectural fragments in painted wood, and art works and jewellery, from Tibet, Nepal and Pakistan; and a solid collection from China, with predictable Buddhas and vases, but also curiosities like imperial warming plates. Take a look, too, at the Luristan bronzes from eighth-century BC Iran, and marvel at the similarities between these and some of the Etruscan bronzes of the same age you may well have seen elsewhere in the city.

Category: Rome