The birth of the Capitoline Museums, the oldest public museum in the world, dates back to 1471, when Pope Sixtus IV donated a group of bronze statues to the Roman people, which formed the initial nucleus of the collection. The collections were later expanded by the popes with works coming from excavations of Rome, from the Vatican or purchased especially for the museum. The archaeological collections were greatly enriched at the end of the 19th century with finds from excavations for the construction of entire districts of the city that had become the capital of Italy.
The collections of the Capitoline Museums are exhibited in the two buildings that together with the Palazzo Senatorio delimit the Piazza del Campidoglio: Palazzo dei Conservatori and Palazzo Nuovo, connected by an underground gallery that houses the Galleria Lapidaria and leads to the ancient Tabularium, whose monumental arches overlook the Roman Forum.
The Palazzo Nuovo houses the collections of ancient sculptures resulting from the collections of the great noble families of past centuries, while the Palazzo dei Conservatori, which retains its original core, is decorated with splendid frescoes depicting the stories of Rome and the ancient Capitoline bronzes: the Capitoline Wolf, the Spinario and the Capitoline Brutus.
On the second floor, the Pinacoteca Capitolina presents works by Caravaggio and Guercino, along with a substantial nucleus of paintings by Guido Reni and Pietro da Cortona, in an itinerary that runs from the late Middle Ages to the 18th century.
