Discover Capitoline Museums

The Capitoline Museums sit on the Capitoline hill in two facing palaces, the Palazzo dei Conservatori and the Palazzo Nuovo, either side of Piazza del Campidoglio — the square Michelangelo designed in 1536. Underneath, a passage runs through the Tabularium, ancient Rome's records office, and comes out at an arcade looking over the Forum.

It is the oldest public museum in the world, and the claim has a specific basis. In 1471 Pope Sixtus IV gave a collection of ancient bronzes to the people of Rome rather than adding them to a papal collection. Clement XII then opened the museum to the public in 1734, making art available to anyone rather than to its owners.

What is here is the city's own image of itself: the bronze she-wolf that is Rome's symbol, the equestrian Marcus Aurelius that stood outside until 1996, the fragments of the Colossus of Constantine, and the Dying Gaul. It is a civic collection rather than a princely one, and its admission policy still says so — Romans enter free.

The Capitoline Museums sit on the Capitoline hill in two facing palaces, the Palazzo dei Conservatori and the Palazzo Nuovo, either side of Piazza del Campidoglio — the square Michelangelo designed in 1536. Underneath, a passage runs through the Tabularium, ancient Rome's records office, and comes out at an arcade looking over the Forum.

It is the oldest public museum in the world, and the claim has a specific basis. In 1471 Pope Sixtus IV gave a collection of ancient bronzes to the people of Rome rather than adding them to a papal collection. Clement XII then opened the museum to the public in 1734, making art available to anyone rather than to its owners.

What is here is the city's own image of itself: the bronze she-wolf that is Rome's symbol, the equestrian Marcus Aurelius that stood outside until 1996, the fragments of the Colossus of Constantine, and the Dying Gaul. It is a civic collection rather than a princely one, and its admission policy still says so — Romans enter free.

The square came before the museum, and it is by Michelangelo. Piazza del Campidoglio was designed in 1536 and completed over the following centuries. Its logic is deliberate and easy to miss: the two palaces are set at an angle rather than parallel, which widens the square towards the approach and corrects the perspective, and the paving carries an oval star pattern centred on the equestrian statue.

Two palaces, one museum, joined underground. The Palazzo dei Conservatori and the Palazzo Nuovo face each other across the square and are not connected above ground. The route between them runs below, through the Tabularium — which means the walk from one half of the museum to the other passes through a first-century BC Roman building.

The Tabularium is the architectural high point, and it is not a gallery. Ancient Rome's records office survives as a massive substructure of concrete and travertine arches. Its arcade opens directly over the Roman Forum, framing it through Roman openings rather than a modern window. This is the best view in the museum and one of the best in Rome.

The Exedra of Marcus Aurelius, added in 2005, is the one frankly modern intervention: a glazed hall built to hold the original bronze, with the exposed foundations of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus beneath it. The contrast is the argument — a 2005 room whose floor is a sixth-century-BC temple.

Nothing here was built as a museum. The Capitoline Museums occupy two palaces that already stood on the hill, the Palazzo dei Conservatori and the Palazzo Nuovo, and the work that made them a single composition was done to the square between them rather than to either building.

Michelangelo's square, from 1536, is the structural idea. It was completed over the following centuries, and its geometry is corrective rather than decorative: the two palaces are deliberately not parallel, splaying outward so the square widens towards whoever climbs the Cordonata, and the paving carries an oval star pattern centred on the equestrian statue. The façades were given matching orders so that two buildings of different dates read as one design.

Underneath is a Roman building nobody demolished. The Tabularium, ancient Rome's records office of the first century BC, survives as a massive substructure of concrete faced with travertine arches — and it survived because it was useful: it was chosen as the seat of the Municipality of Rome in 1144, which makes it the oldest town hall in the world. The route between the two halves of the museum runs through it, so the connection between the palaces is Roman rather than modern.

The one frankly new structure is the Exedra of Marcus Aurelius, added in 2005, a glazed hall built to take the original bronze indoors after the copy replaced it outside in 1996. Its floor leaves the foundations of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus exposed, so a room built in this century stands over the podium of the temple the hill was named for.

Is this really the oldest museum in the world? The oldest public museum, on two dates working together: the collection was given to the people of Rome in 1471, and Clement XII opened it to the public in 1734 — meaning a place where art could be seen by all, not only by its owners.

Why does the ticket price keep changing? Because the civic museums are priced together with whatever temporary exhibition is running. There is no single standing admission figure, which is why any price quoted in a guidebook is probably tied to an exhibition that has closed.

Is the Marcus Aurelius in the square the real one? No. That is a copy installed in 1996, faithful in volume though not in gilding. The original bronze is inside, in the Exedra built for it in 2005.

Is the Capitoline Wolf Etruscan? Traditionally dated to the fifth century BC, but some restorers have argued it is medieval, of the twelfth century, and the question is open. The twins are a separate, later addition of the fifteenth century, attributed to Antonio del Pollaiolo.

Do I need to book? Not for general admission, which is not timed. Buying same-day at the ticket office avoids the presale fee that online and call-centre purchases carry.

I live in Rome. Do I pay? No — residents of Rome and the metropolitan city enter free, as do MIC cardholders, on production of a document proving it. Without the document, the non-resident price is charged at the desk.

Does the Roma Pass work here? Yes, for free or reduced entry, and without the separate reservation that timed-entry museums require.

What is the Tabularium? Ancient Rome's records office, of the first century BC, surviving as the massive substructure between the two palaces. You walk through it to cross from one half of the museum to the other, and its arcade gives the best view of the Forum in the building.

Where are the Colossus of Constantine's missing parts? There never was a complete statue to lose — what survives is fragments of a seated figure from the Basilica of Maxentius. Since February 2024 a full-scale reconstruction has stood in the gardens of Villa Caffarelli, which is how the head and hand in the courtyard start to make sense.