Capitoline Museums

Climb the gentle ramp designed by Michelangelo and you arrive at one of the most beautiful squares in Rome, framed by matching palaces and centred on a bronze horseman. Inside those palaces lies the oldest public museum collection in the world. This is the Capitoline Museums, set on the hill that was the sacred heart of ancient Rome.

The hill itself is the Capitoline, one of the seven hills of Rome and, in ancient times, the site of its most important temple. To stand here is to stand at the symbolic centre of the ancient city, with the ruins of the Forum spread out just below on the far side of the hill.

The collection began in 1471, when a pope gave a group of ancient bronzes to the people of Rome, and it has grown ever since. That gift makes this, by a long measure, the oldest public museum in the world, open to ordinary citizens centuries before the idea became common elsewhere.

The square that ties the museums together was designed by Michelangelo in the sixteenth century. Its star-patterned paving, gently rising palaces, and central statue form one of the great works of Renaissance town planning, meant to restore dignity to a hill that had fallen into neglect.

At the centre of the square stands a bronze horseman, the emperor Marcus Aurelius, calm upon his horse. The figure outside is a copy; the precious original, which survived because it was long mistaken for a Christian emperor, is preserved indoors, where you can stand close to one of the few great bronzes to come down from antiquity.

The collection's symbol is older still. A bronze she-wolf, lean and fierce, stands for the legend of the city's founding, when the twins Romulus and Remus were said to have been suckled by a wolf. It has served as an emblem of Rome for a very long time.

Among the marble are works that have moved visitors for centuries. A dying warrior, propped on one arm, holds pain and dignity together; and colossal fragments of a giant statue of the emperor Constantine — a huge head, a hand, a foot — lie in a courtyard, hinting at the scale of the lost whole.

The museums also hold halls of portrait busts, where the actual faces of Roman emperors and citizens look back at you across two thousand years. Walking the rows, you meet real people rather than ideal types, ageing, frowning, and individual, which brings the ancient city startlingly close.

The setting offers more than art. From a gallery and terrace within the museums you look straight out over the Roman Forum, the broken columns and arches of the ancient city centre, so the collection and the ruins it came from sit within a single view.

The two main palaces are linked by an underground passage that also gives access to an ancient temple base and a viewpoint, so a visit moves between art, architecture, and the bones of the ancient hill itself. Allow more time than the galleries alone might suggest.

A few practical notes. The museums are ticketed, and a combined ticket can be good value; they are quieter than Rome's most famous sites, so they make a calmer half day. Comfortable shoes help on the hill and the stairs, and the terrace cafe has one of the better views in the city.

Before you leave, step back out into Michelangelo's square at the top of the ramp and look back over the city. You have just stood among the oldest public art collection in the world, on the hill where Rome once worshipped and ruled. Few places gather quite so much of the city's long story into one small summit.