Six Museums That Hold the Material Legacy of Rome

Key facts

• The Capitoline Museums claim to be the oldest public museum in the world and occupy two Renaissance palaces on Piazza del Campidoglio, designed by Michelangelo.
• The Capitoline Wolf was re-dated to the 11th–12th centuries after restorer Anna Maria Carruba's 2006 finding and radiocarbon dating two years later; the twins were added in the 15th century.
• The original equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius survived the Middle Ages because early Christians mistook the pagan emperor for Constantine.
• The National Roman Museum's Palazzo Massimo alle Terme displays the Boxer at Rest, a 1st-century BC bronze recovered in 1885 from the Quirinal Hill, and frescoes from Empress Livia's villa at Prima Porta.
• MANN holds artifacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum buried by Vesuvius in AD 79, including the Alexander Mosaic from the House of the Faun and the Secret Cabinet, fully opened to the public in 2000.
• The British Museum, opened in 1759, displays the Portland Vase and the Warren Cup, purchased in 1999 for £1.8 million.
• The Ara Pacis Augustae, commissioned by the Roman Senate in 13 BC and dedicated four years later, was reassembled under Mussolini for the 2000th anniversary of Augustus's birth in 1937–38.
• The Lugdunum Museum in Lyon, designed by Bernard Zehrfuss in 1975, displays the Claudian Tables, bronze plaques of Emperor Claudius's AD 48 speech arguing for the admission of Gauls to the Roman Senate.