Museo di Roma

History

The museum was founded by the art historian Antonio Muñoz, who was director of the Antichità e Belle Arti ("antiquities and fine arts department") of the government of Rome. It was the first civic museum of the city. It was housed in the Pastificio Pantanella, a large former pasta factory in Piazza Bocca della Verità, overlooking the Circo Massimo in the via dei Cerchi, in the Ripa rione of the city. The factory building also housed the Museo dell'Impero Romano, and was renamed "Palazzo dei Musei". The Museo di Roma opened on 21 April 1930; Muñoz was its first director. When the Second World War began in 1939, the museum closed.

The museum re-opened only in 1952, in a new political climate and in a new location at Palazzo Braschi, a Neoclassical palace near Piazza Navona, built in the early years of the nineteenth century by Luigi Braschi Onesti, which since 1949 had already housed the new Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna.

Collections

The collection of the museum was at first intended only to illustrate and document the past. Thanks to numerous bequests, donations and acquisitions – among them a collection of some 5000 drawings, engravings and old illustrated books belonging to Antonio Muñoz – the holdings of the museum now include many works of art, and it has become primarily an art museum. Artists represented include Pompeo Batoni, Giuseppe Bottani, Ippolito Caffi, Antonio Canova, Giuseppe Ceracchi, Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari, Lievin Cruyl, Felice Giani, Pietro Labruzzi, Francesco Mochi, Giovanni Paolo Panini, Bartolomeo Pinelli, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Joshua Reynolds and Nicola Salvi (designer of the Trevi Fountain).