Capitoline Museums

This is the oldest public museum in the world. In 1471, Pope Sixtus IV donated a collection of bronze statues to the people of Rome — not to the Church, to the people — and displayed them on the Capitoline Hill. The gesture was partly political (he wanted to be popular) and partly a genuine act of cultural generosity that effectively invented the concept of public museums. Every museum on Earth descends from this one.

The most famous resident is the Capitoline Wolf — the bronze she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. For centuries, this was considered an Etruscan work from the fifth century BC, a genuine artefact from the founding myth of Rome. Then in 2006, radiocarbon dating revealed the wolf was actually cast in the twelfth or thirteenth century AD. The twin babies were always known to be later additions, from the late fifteenth century, but the wolf itself being medieval was a genuine shock to the art world. The foundational symbol of Rome is a medieval creation.

Michelangelo designed the piazza outside, including the trapezoidal layout and the stunning geometric paving pattern based on a twelve-pointed star. He also designed the facades of the buildings on either side. The central equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius is a copy — the original is inside the museum, in a climate-controlled glass room. That original is the only surviving equestrian bronze statue from antiquity, and it survived only because medieval Christians mistakenly believed it depicted Constantine, the first Christian emperor. Every other imperial equestrian bronze was melted down.

The underground gallery connecting the two museum buildings passes through the ancient Tabularium — the state archives of Republican Rome — and offers one of the most dramatic views of the Roman Forum through its massive arched windows. You look down from the hill that was the political heart of the Republic at the ruins of the commercial and legal heart below.