The Diary Game 21/05/2021. The Capitoline Museums. Rome II

alein (70)in #thediarygame • 4 years ago

Conservatory Palace

From the courtyard of the Palace of the Conservatives, you can see a series of fragments of the colossal statue of Emperor Constantine that was once found in the Basilica of Maxentius in the Roman Forum.
Only the marble parts of the statue from the 4th century have been preserved to this day. The rest, ie the trunk, legs and arms were made of bronze and wood and covered with fabric.

Inside, the most famous statues can be admired in the Conservatory Apartments, nine very beautiful rooms decorated with frescoes, tapestries and paintings. These rooms were used as offices by magistrates - conservatives. The largest room is the Orazi e Curiazi Hall, which is decorated with frescoes depicting scenes from the history of Rome and where a statue of Bernini depicting Pope Urban VIII can be admired.

One of the most famous statues in the Palace of Conservatives is Spinario, a statue of a boy trying to remove a toe from his leg. It is a bronze copy dating from the 1st century BC. after a Greek statue from the 5th century BC. Another noteworthy work is the Etruscan wolf from the 5th century BC. Remus and Romulus, the mythical founders of Rome, were added much later, in the 15th century.

After the Conservatories Apartments, the collection continues in the Museum of the Conservatories Palace. Here you can see several ancient statues. In the Horti Lamiani halls there is a bust of Commodus from the 2nd century AD. which was discovered in 1874 in the Lamiani Gardens.

Next is Marcus Aurelius Exedra, a modern wing of the museum built to house the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius. This bronze statue was once placed in the center of Piazza del Campidoglio but in 1981 was replaced with a replica. The original was moved here to protect it from the weather.

The second floor of the museum is the place where you can admire a painting exhibition containing pieces from the fourteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century. Among the exhibits are works by masters such as Velazques, Titian, Rubens, Tintoretto, Caravaggio and van Dyck. Notable are the work "The Riddle" by Caravaggio, "John the Baptist" also by Caravaggio, "The Crossbowman" by Lorenzo Lotto and the portrait of two painters by Anthony van Dyck. Also on the second floor of the Conservatory Palace is the porcelain collection and on the opposite side of the building, in Palazzo Caffarelli is a collection of coins, medals and jewelry that belongs to the city of Rome.

Palazzo Nuovo

The New Palace was built in the mid-17th century after Michelangelo's project to complete the Conservatory Palace and was opened to the public in 1734. It has two floors full of Roman artifacts including statues, sarcophagi, busts and mosaics.

A series of noteworthy sculptures can also be found in this section of the Capitoline Museums. The best known of these is probably the Dying Gaul, a statue that was discovered in Caesar's Gardens along with another very interesting statue, the Ludovisi Gaul, a statue that is now in the Altemps Palace.

Another exceptional statue in the New Palace is that of Venus Capitolina, a Roman statue that is a copy of a Greek one. In one of the rooms of the New Palace there is a red marble statue of a drunken fauna dating from the second century AD. The fauna is a creature from Roman mythology represented by a man with cap feet and horns, a symbol of fertility.

In the Great Hall, the largest room in the New Palace, you can see several interesting statues, including two statues depicting some centaurs that were found in Hadrian's Villa. These statues are known as the Old Centaur and the Young Centaur. From the same villa comes the Pigeon Mosaic, a mosaic from the 2nd century AD. An extensive collection of over a hundred busts from Antiquity are on display in the Hall of Emperors and the Hall of Philosophers.

Epigraphy Gallery and Tabular of Ancient Rome

In addition to the two main buildings of the Capitoline Museums, there is also the Galleria Congiunzione, which connects the two underground palaces. The underground tunnel houses the Galleria Lapidaria, a collection of ancient writings. The tunnel is also connected to the Tabularium, an ancient building that housed all the official documents of Rome. In the Middle Ages, Palazzo Senatorio, the Palace of Senators, was built over the Tabulariu. Some of the ruins of ancient Roman temples can still be seen here. Tabularium Gallery also offers a beautiful view of the Roman Forum.