14 Best Museums in Rome (2026)

The big four. These are the museums most visitors come for, and each has its own full guide. The Vatican Museums are the popes' collections, one of the largest museum complexes in the world: classical sculpture, the map gallery, the Raphael Rooms, and Michelangelo's ceiling in the Sistine Chapel near the end of the route. Give it a morning and don't rush the early rooms.

Price: €20 at the door, €25 booked on tickets.museivaticani.va, the only official online seller. Open: Monday to Saturday 8am-8pm, final entry 6pm; closed on Sundays except the last Sunday of the month (free, 9am-2pm). Allow: three to four hours. Metro: Ottaviano or Cipro (line A). Cover shoulders and knees.

The Borghese Gallery is a cardinal's 17th-century collection in a villa in the park: Bernini's Apollo and Daphne and The Rape of Proserpina, six Caravaggios, Raphael and Titian. Entry is in two-hour slots of 180 people, which keeps it calm, and makes it the best small museum in Rome. The catch is that you must book, and slots sell out.

Price: €16 plus a compulsory €2 booking fee. Open: Tuesday to Sunday 9am-7pm, last slot 5.45pm; closed Mondays. Free on the first Sunday of the month, but you still book and pay the €2 fee. Allow: the two-hour slot. Metro: Spagna or Flaminio (line A), then a walk through the park.

The Capitoline Museums, on Michelangelo's piazza on the Capitoline Hill, are the oldest public museums in the world, opened in 1734. Inside: the bronze she-wolf, the original equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, the Dying Gaul and two Caravaggios. An underground passage takes you between the two palaces, past a terrace with a view straight down over the Roman Forum.

Price: €16.50 for non-residents while the Angeli exhibition runs (to 10 January 2027), then €15; €1 extra if you book ahead. Free for everyone on the first Sunday of the month (the Villa Caffarelli exhibition space excepted), and free every day for residents of Rome. Open: daily 9.30am-7.30pm, last admission 6.30pm, including Mondays. Allow: two hours. Metro: Colosseo (line B), about 12 minutes' walk.

Castel Sant'Angelo is Emperor Hadrian's tomb, turned into a papal fortress and prison and now a national museum. The museum itself is papal apartments and armour; the real draw is the climb up through the building to the terrace, with one of the best views of St Peter's.

Price: €18 (since 1 July 2026); free on the first Sunday of the month. Open: Tuesday to Sunday 9am-7.30pm, last entry 6.30pm; closed Mondays, except the first Monday afternoon of the month in 2026 (2pm-8pm, €5 at the door). Allow: 1.5-2 hours. Metro: Lepanto (line A), about 15 minutes' walk.

Ancient Rome indoors. The Forum shows you the ruins; these museums show you what stood in them. Palazzo Massimo, by Termini station, is the best of the National Roman Museum's four sites, and the one to choose if you see only one museum of Roman art. Its top floor holds the painted garden room from the villa of Livia, wife of the emperor Augustus; downstairs are the bronze Boxer at Rest and some of the finest Roman portraits anywhere. It's rarely crowded.

Price: €15, which covers the National Roman Museum's sites (one entry each) for a week; free on the first Sunday of the month. Open: Tuesday to Sunday 9am-7pm; closed Mondays. Allow: 1.5-2 hours. Metro: Termini (lines A and B) or Repubblica (line A). A good plan for an arrival or departure day.

Centrale Montemartini is Rome's first public power station, from 1912, with Roman statues from the Capitoline collections standing among the old diesel engines and turbines. Marble gods against black machinery: it's the most striking museum setting in the city, and few visitors make it out to Ostiense.

Price: €11 for non-residents (€14.50 with the Moda in luce fashion exhibition, to 15 November 2026); free for residents of Rome. Like the Capitoline, it's free for everyone on the first Sunday of the month. Open: Tuesday to Sunday 9am-7pm, last admission 6pm; closed Mondays. Allow: an hour. Metro: Garbatella (line B), about 10 minutes' walk. Pair it with lunch in Testaccio or the Testaccio market stalls.

The Ara Pacis is the Altar of Augustan Peace, consecrated in 9 BC to celebrate the peace Augustus brought after his campaigns, and carved with a procession of the imperial family. It stands in a glass-and-white pavilion by Richard Meier beside the river, built in 2006. It's a quick visit, and a good one for anyone who has just seen the Forum.

Price: €14 for non-residents; the 'L'Ara si rivela' multimedia experience, which shows the altar in its original colours, is a separate €15 ticket. Free for residents of Rome, and for everyone on the first Sunday of the month (not the exhibition space or 'L'Ara si rivela'). Open: daily 9.30am-7.30pm, last admission 6.30pm, Mondays included. Allow: 45 minutes to an hour. Metro: Spagna or Flaminio (line A), about 10-15 minutes' walk.

Villa Giulia is the national Etruscan museum, in a pope's 16th-century summer villa on the edge of Villa Borghese park. The star is the Sarcophagus of the Spouses, a terracotta couple reclining at a banquet, from about 520 BC. It's the place to understand who lived here before Rome.

Price: €13; free on the first Sunday of the month and included in the Roma Pass. Open: Tuesday to Sunday 8.30am-7.30pm, last entry 6.30pm; closed Mondays. Allow: 1.5-2 hours. Getting there: tram 2, 3 or 19, or about 14 minutes' walk from Flaminio Metro (line A).

Palace galleries. Rome's great families kept their art at home, and three of their palaces are open. Galleria Doria Pamphilj is still owned by the family, its pictures hung floor to ceiling in gilded galleries on Via del Corso. The star is Velázquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X; there are Caravaggios, Titian and Raphael too. It feels like visiting a house.

Price: €16 at the ticket office, €17 online, with the audio guide included; under-12s free. Privately owned, so no free first Sunday. Open: Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 9am-7pm; Friday to Sunday 10am-8pm; closed every Wednesday. Allow: about 1.5 hours. Metro: none close; a few minutes from Piazza Venezia. No cloakroom, so leave big bags behind.

Palazzo Barberini is the national gallery of old masters, in the palace of the Barberini pope Urban VIII. Caravaggio's Judith and Holofernes and Raphael's La Fornarina hang here, and the great hall has Pietro da Cortona's huge painted ceiling. The ticket also covers Galleria Corsini across the river in Trastevere.

Price: €15 for both galleries, valid 20 days; free on the first Sunday of the month (booking required). Open: Tuesday to Sunday 10am-7pm, ticket office to 6pm; closed Mondays. Allow: 1.5-2 hours. Metro: Barberini (line A). It's ten minutes uphill from the Trevi Fountain.

Galleria Colonna is the most lavish of the three, a Baroque Great Hall of mirrors, chandeliers and painted ceilings in the palace the Colonna family still owns, with Annibale Carracci's Bean Eater among the paintings. The catch: it opens to the public only on Friday and Saturday mornings.

Price: Saturdays €15 for the short route or €25 for the full route; Fridays €35 for a guided tour of about two hours. Open: Fridays from 9.30am (guided only); Saturdays 9.15am, last entry 1.15pm. Allow: one to two hours. Getting there: five minutes' walk south of the Trevi Fountain.

Modern and literary. For a break from antiquity, the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art (the GNAMC) is a short walk from the Borghese Gallery in the park, in a grand 1911 building. Its collection runs from 19th-century Italian painting to Klimt, Van Gogh, Monet and Pollock, and it's rarely busy.

Price: €17, or €10 the same day with a Borghese Gallery ticket; free on the first Sunday of the month with compulsory online booking. Open: Tuesday to Sunday 9am-7pm, plus Thursday evenings to 11pm until 17 December 2026; closed Mondays. Allow: 1.5-2 hours. Metro: Flaminio (line A), about 600 meters; or tram 3 or 19.

MAXXI, the national museum of 21st-century art and architecture, is as much about the building as the shows: Zaha Hadid's concrete curves and suspended black staircases, opened in 2010 in the Flaminio district north of the centre. The exhibitions change, so check what's on before you go.

Price: €15 at the box office, €14 online (a special €10 for everyone until 12 November 2026); €12 for 18-25s (€11 online); free for under-18s. Open: Tuesday to Sunday 11am-7pm, ticket office to 6pm; closed Mondays. Allow: 1.5-2 hours. Getting there: tram 2 from Piazzale Flaminio, next to Flaminio Metro (line A).

The Keats-Shelley House is the small apartment beside the Spanish Steps where the poet John Keats died in 1821, aged 25. It's now a museum of the English Romantic poets in Rome, with letters, manuscripts and a library, and a window over the steps.

Price: €7 for adults; €5 for under-18s, over-65s and students. Open: Monday to Saturday 10am-1pm and 2pm-6pm, last entry 5.45pm; closed Sundays. Allow: 45 minutes to an hour. Metro: Spagna (line A). The museum floor is up a flight of stairs.