Capitoline Museums (2026): €16.50 Tickets, Hours, Free Sundays and the Forum View (2026)

The short version. Buy at the ticket office on the day (no fee) or online for €1 more, allow two hours or more, and make three stops before anything else: the Marcus Aurelius hall, the Capitoline Wolf and the Tabularium. The museums are open every day, so they're a good Monday choice when the state museums are shut.

The original Marcus Aurelius. The bronze horse and rider (AD 161-180, 4.24 metres) was probably put up in AD 176 for the emperor's triumph over the Germanic tribes, or just after his death in 180. Rome had 22 such larger-than-life equestrian statues; this is the only one to survive. It stood at the Lateran from at least the 10th century until January 1538, when Pope Paul III had it moved to the Capitoline, and Michelangelo then made it the centrepiece of his new piazza. Badly corroded, it came down in 1981, was restored by 1988, and now stands indoors in the glass hall built in the old 'Roman Garden' of Palazzo dei Conservatori, beside the gilded bronze Hercules, pieces of the bronze colossus of Constantine and the remains of the Temple of Jupiter.

The Capitoline Wolf. The bronze she-wolf (75 cm) is the symbol of Rome, and it has been in the Sala della Lupa since the mid-16th century, when the room was an open loggia. It came from Etruscan or southern Italian workshops of the 5th century BC and probably had nothing to do with Rome's founding legend at first; the twins Romulus and Remus were added later, attributed by some to Pollaiolo. Look at the walls too: they hold fragments of the Fasti, lists of Republican magistrates and triumphs found in the Forum.

The Tabularium and the Forum view. From the museum, the Galleria di Congiunzione, a 1930s tunnel about 8 metres under the piazza, links the palaces. It passes the remains of 2nd-century Roman houses and the Galleria Lapidaria, 130 ancient inscriptions on Roman public and private life. It leads to the Tabularium, the state record office that Quintus Lutatius Catulus built in 78 BC to hold laws, treaties and Senate decrees. A long corridor past the Temple of Veiovis brings you to the gallery that opens onto the Roman Forum: the best view of it you'll get with a roof over your head.

Palazzo Nuovo, across the piazza, opened to the public in 1734 under Pope Clement XII and keeps its 18th-century layout of ancient sculpture, including the Capitoline Venus. Two rooms are closed for now: the halls of the Horti of Maecenas (maintenance) and the Pietro da Cortona Room (renovation).

Piazza del Campidoglio is Michelangelo's design. A year after the Marcus Aurelius arrived on the hill in 1538, the Roman Senate asked him to set the statue properly; instead he planned the whole square around it, buildings, sculpture and patterned paving as a single whole, though it was altered and added to over the following centuries. The hill under it was originally two summits, the Capitolium and the Arx, and the piazza now sits about 8 metres above the valley between them. It's free, and it's the way in to the museums: climb the Cordonata, the broad stepped ramp from the street below.