The mighty basilica on the Esquilino's summit, the two great museums of the Museo Nazionale Romano, and the multicultural heart of the hill.
Last updated August 23, 2026
In a nutshell: the Esquilino hill pairs Rome's most beloved basilica with two of its finest museums. Santa Maria Maggiore is the city's great Marian church, with golden mosaics, a gilded ceiling and the Salus Populi Romani; Palazzo Massimo alle Terme holds the Boxer at Rest and the frescoes of the House of Livia; and the Terme di Diocleziano survive as a Michelangelo cloister. Cross the hill to the Monti quarter, duck into San Pietro in Vincoli for Michelangelo's Moses, or head back to the district overview.
Mysteriously never busy, this museum is stuffed with wonders: sit in a room frescoed as an idyllic garden and imagine Livia, the wife of Augustus, enjoying the same view at her summer villa; see bronzes from Caligula's ceremonial ships; and study the delicately portrayed scars of an ancient Grecian boxer.
Tip: Start on the top floor and work your way down. Tickets are available online or from the machines at the ticket office, and this is a great place to come on a hot day: it is unlikely to be busy and you stay out of the fierce sun.
Ground floor - the Boxer and the Prince: the mesmerising Boxer at Rest is the outstanding highlight of the ground level - a 2nd-to-1st-century-BCE Greek bronze, and an extraordinary work. This is no idealised god but a boxer who is weary and has been through many rounds, with a cauliflower ear, knocked-out teeth and cuts and bruises on his face, the damage vividly depicted through inlaid copper. He is muscular and powerful, captured here as if resting between bouts. Excavated on the Quirinale Hill in 1885, he was apparently deliberately hidden - there is a wonderful photo of the statue at the time of its discovery, looking as if he is sitting waiting at the bottom of an excavated pit. He shares the room with the 2nd-century heroic bronze of what is thought to be a Hellenistic Prince, an idealised nude discovered on the Quirinale: a contrast in approach while sharing the same virtuoso artistry. Such bronzes are incredibly rare, as pieces were usually melted down to reuse the metal.
Floor 1 - Caligula's barge bronzes: a roomful of glass cases holds the bronze fittings from two ships recovered from the bottom of 30m-deep Lake Nemi in Lazio in the 1930s. The perfectly preserved protomes - figurative heads that decorated the ends of the ships' beams - include lions, panthers and a Medusa, and indicate how lavish the barges must have been: less boats than floating palaces, built for the reputedly erratic Emperor Caligula. Their recovery reads like a saga: in 1446 Cardinal Prospero Colonna, having heard rumours of a shipwreck, took boats out and confirmed a wreck but could raise nothing; almost a century later inventor Guglielmo de Lorena and his partner Francesco de Marchi used a newly invented diving bell to bring up small sculptures; and it was only in 1929, under Mussolini, that the lake was drained through an ancient Roman drain and not one but two ships were exposed, their pipework inscribed with the name Caligula. The same floor holds rare Roman copies of famous Greek works - two marble reproductions of the Discobolus of Myron, and the delicately sculpted Sleeping Hermaphroditus, who lies on their front allowing a discreet peek at both male and female characteristics - plus portrait busts tracing how Rome's movers and shakers were depicted: militaristic under Trajan and Nerva, then swept up in Hadrian's fashion for the idealised sculpture of ancient Greece. Note the relief of tragic Antinous, rumoured to be Emperor Hadrian's lover, who mysteriously drowned in the Nile aged 21; the distraught emperor made a god of him and flooded the empire with statues, here shown as Silvanus, god of woods and fields, harvesting grapes. A 2m-high sculpture of Augustus depicts the emperor as Pontifex Maximus, head priest of the Roman Republic.
Floor 2 - the House of Livia: the extraordinary frescoes from the House of Livia Drusilla (58 BCE-29 CE) are the outstanding highlight of the entire museum. Livia was the wife of Emperor Augustus, mother of Tiberius and, if ancient sources are to be believed, an avid schemer and power behind the throne. Her villa at Prima Porta, around 12km north of Rome, was called the House of the White Hen: as Pliny the Elder recounted, a white hen dropped a laurel leaf on Livia's lap when she was first betrothed. In 1863 archaeologists uncovered these four frescoes, covering all four walls of a subterranean triclinium (dining room), and sitting in the room genuinely feels like being immersed in an ancient, paradisiacal garden: botanically accurate wild tangles of roses, pomegranates, oleander, strawberry trees, irises, camomile and, of course, laurel - you can almost hear the birdsong. The clever lighting mimics the modulation of light through the day and highlights the richness of the millennia-old colours. Elsewhere on the floor, recovered Roman frescoes are laid out to show the style of imperial interior decoration: intimate bedroom scenes of nature, mythology, domestic and erotic life, delicate landscapes from a dark-painted winter triclinium, friezes of garland-carrying caryatids and still lifes featuring theatre masks, plus the intricate mosaics and inlay work of the grandest villas.
Basement - the numismatic museum: in the ancient world, currency was a form of media - there was no other way to circulate a leader's image short of statuary. The basement holds coins dating from the 9th century BCE, with examples of ancient image management including Emperor Antoninus Pius (138-161CE) showering money on a grateful subject. This section of the museum was closed for renovations at the time of research.
The legend of the hermaphrodite: the Sleeping Hermaphroditus was a popular subject in ancient Greece and much copied in Rome, based on the myth of the nymph Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite: Salmacis fell in love with him and asked the gods to join their bodies together.
Boxing in the ancient world: boxing is mentioned in Homer's Iliad and became an Olympic sport in the 7th century BCE. Fighters' hands were covered in leather straps and the majority of blows landed on the head; later, in gladiatorial combat, gloves were made more lethal, incorporating metal and glass.
How the frescoes survived: the fresco (literally 'fresh') technique painted onto fresh plaster made from ground lime and marble. The natural colours soaked into the plaster, which then hardened so the colours became part of the wall; the surface was finally polished to a soft sheen. That is why Roman wall paintings have lasted across the millennia.
In the footsteps of the pope: here once stood Villa Peretti, a 16th-century estate belonging to Pope Sixtus V. In the 19th century its gardens were chosen as the site for Termini station and the buildings were pulled down to make way for the piazza in front; Palazzo Massimo, which houses the museum, was built a few years later.
The museum in four acts: through its four sites, the Museo Nazionale Romano traces the history of Rome and its region from its origins to modernity. The Terme di Diocleziano holds the magnificent remains of the Baths of Diocletian, transformed in the Renaissance with the intervention of Michelangelo; Palazzo Massimo preserves masterpieces of the Roman Empire at its height, including the Hellenistic bronze Boxer at Rest; Palazzo Altemps has a Renaissance courtyard and has housed sculptural collections since the 16th century, with masterpieces such as the Ludovisi Throne and the Galatian Suicide; and the Crypta Balbi is due to reopen as a true cultural block.
In front of the museum lies a small, shady courtyard garden centred on a cooling pond. The Roman ruins around you are the remains of a huge bath complex ('termini' in Italian) that could accommodate 3,000 people. Inside, the museum offers insights into ancient Roman life, from the popularity of the cult of Mithraism to touching tombstone inscriptions that evoke the ancient Romans better than any building. The large 16th-century cloister was built as part of the charterhouse of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, based on drawings by Michelangelo. As you wander you glimpse the original complex, completed in the early 4th century as a state-of-the-art combination of baths, libraries, concert halls and gardens - the Aula Ottagona and the Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli were also once part of this enormous endeavour, which fell into disrepair after the aqueduct that fed it was destroyed by invaders in about 536 CE.
Official site →One of Rome's four patriarchal basilicas, the majestic Santa Maria Maggiore stands on the Esquilino's summit, where snow is said to have miraculously fallen in the summer of 358 CE. A church was first established here in the 5th century, but the centuries saw it get ever more splendid: the 18th-century baroque loggia protects the medieval facade, which is decorated by beautiful mosaics.
Tip: Entrance to the church is free. Several tours are available - buy tickets online or at the desk to the right of the entrance. The loggia tour (€6) gets you close to the glorious medieval mosaics on the facade; the loggia and dome tour (€9) adds the terraces below the church's twin domes for great views across the surrounding rooftops; the excavations beneath the church cost €11.50.
The pope's favourite church: Santa Maria Maggiore is the largest church devoted to the Virgin Mary in the city, and a favourite of Pope Francis, who has requested to be buried here rather than in St Peter's when he dies. You can see his point: the interior is awe-inspiring, and a wonderful place to come for celebratory mass, such as at Easter. Rising behind the church, the campanile - Rome's tallest - tops out at 75m. In the piazza outside, the founding of the church is commemorated every 5 August with a light show. According to legend, in the 4th century Pope Liberius had a vision of Mary, who told him to build a church where snow fell even though it was the height of summer; the miracle is also celebrated inside, with white flower petals snowing from above the altar.
Bernini's hidden staircase: you will need a place on a loggia tour, which run about hourly, to glimpse the staircase designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini that connects the sacristy with the five floors below. The spiral seems almost organic, without any ornament, and appears to evoke a movement from darkness to light.
Exterior mosaics and tower: you cannot help but gaze upwards at the glimmering mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore, half hidden behind the loggia. They were the work of Filippo Rusuti in 1300 and depict the legend behind the founding of the church. In 1741 the loggia - a kind of balcony - was designed by Ferdinand Fuga, which not only protects the mosaics but lets you get up close to them. There is a desk just to the right of the church entrance under the portico: book a tour to access the loggia and see the mosaics close up, as well as to visit the excavations beneath the church.
The nave feels football-pitch vast, empty of pews, under a coffered, gilded ceiling contributed by Pope Alexander VI of the Borgia family - note the family crest at the centre, featuring a bull. The space is edged by multilingual confession boxes and smaller chapels, and although there is a steady stream of visitors this is very much a working basilica, with a service usually going on in one of the chapels. The columns lining the nave are an example of Roman recycling, taken from Roman temples. Particularly spectacular are the glittering 5th-century mosaics in the triumphal arch, showing Jesus as a child, and the Old Testament scenes along the nave. The central image in the apse, signed by Jacopo Torriti, dates from the 13th century and represents the coronation of the Virgin Mary. Beneath your feet is 12th-century Cosmati paving, an early example of this inlay work named after a Roman family who specialised in it for generations.
To the left of the entrance as you go in is a beautiful stone-carved nativity, sculpted by Arnolfo di Cambio. About halfway along the nave on the left, the Cappella Sforza contains the tombs of the cardinal brothers Guido Ascanio Sforza di Santa Fiora and Alessandro Sforza. They asked Michelangelo - then aged 87 - to design the chapel; he sketched out the space but died before it was finished, and the work was completed by Tiberio Calcagni and Giacomo della Porta, who designed the tombs. The chapel is sometimes off-limits to visitors, but you can peer through the gate.
The Pauline Chapel, furthest on the left, contains one of the church's most precious icons: a Byzantine painting of the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus, given the title Salus Populi Romani (Salvation of the Roman People) because it was believed to have kept the plague at bay in Rome during the 6th century. The chapel was built by Pope Paul V and is busily baroque, with smoky marble columns, a gilded altar centred on the icon and frescoes of the life of the Virgin by artists including Guido Reni. The painting is said to have been painted by St Luke, and to be one of the precious items that St Helena, Emperor Constantine's mother, brought back with her from Jerusalem via Constantinople in the 4th century. The chapel also contains the tombs of popes Paul V and Clement VIII.
Francis and the icon: Pope Francis has a deep Marian devotion, like many Latin American Catholics. After being made pope he came to Santa Maria Maggiore to pray before the icon, and in May 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, he made a pilgrimage here on foot from the Vatican; he visits the icon to pray before and after each international trip.
The 18th-century baldachin over the high altar is heavy with gilt cherubs; the altar itself is a porphyry sarcophagus said to contain the relics of St Matthew and other martyrs. A modest plaque embedded in the floor to the right of the altar marks the spot where Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his father Pietro are buried: they had their workshop nearby and worked on the church, Gian believed to have contributed the beautiful spiral staircase connecting the Hall of Popes to the sacristy, which you can only view on the guided tour. Steps lead down to the confessio (a crypt for relics), where a statue of Pope Pius IX kneels before a reliquary claimed to contain a fragment of Jesus' manger, kept in a crib-shaped crystal reliquary. Other relics housed in the church include the remains of St Matthew and St Jerome.
Across the nave from the Pauline Chapel is the sumptuously decorated Cappella Sistina (Sistine Chapel), built in the form of a Greek cross by Domenico Fontana in the 16th century for Pope Sixtus V, who began his life as a swineherd. It contains the tombs of popes Sixtus V and Pius V, an altarpiece by Arnolfo di Cambio, and at its centre a gilded bronze tabernacle dating to 1590, the work of Lodovico del Duca.
About halfway along the right of the nave from the Sistine Chapel is a Gothic chapel dedicated to San Michele Arcangelo (St Michael the Archangel) and San Pietro in Vincoli (St Peter in Chains). The 15th-century frescoes on the ceiling are not in great condition, but are believed to be the sole wall paintings in Rome by the Tuscan Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, famous for his work in Florence.
Excavations in 1966 revealed structures from the imperial period beneath the church. You can book a tour to explore the remains of a 1st-century building, entered under the apse and developed and added to over successive centuries: a large hall and rooms that include the remains of a thermal bath with mosaics and alcoves for heating, frescoes including a unique agricultural calendar, and remnants of the first basilica on the site, founded by Pope Sixtus III in the 5th century CE.
Walk around Esquilino Hill: Rome's most multicultural district - and one of its seven hills - rewards a wander of about 2km and 1.5 hours, starting at Piazza dell'Esquilino and ending at the Acquario Romano.
Flanked by grand 19th-century neoclassical colonnades, this landmark piazza near Termini was laid out as part of Rome's post-unification makeover. It follows the lines of the semicircular exedra (benched portico) of Diocletian's baths complex and was originally known as Piazza Esedra. The central Fontana delle Naiadi was built in the late 19th century and originally decorated with four lions; these were replaced in the early 20th century by sculptor Mario Rutelli's bronze naiads (water nymphs), whose nudity - surrounding the central figure of Glaucus wrestling a fish - was considered highly provocative at the time.
Venture off the beaten track to see big-hitting 20th-century artists in the beautifully restored 1929 palace. The museum exhibits works sourced from the Elena and Claudio Cerasi Foundation (the Cerasi own the construction firm that built the MAXXI), most of them by Roman and Italian artists active in the first half of the 20th century, including de Chirico, Pirandello and Capogrossi. Additional perks include a spacious outdoor terrace, a stylish coffee bar and an excellent gift shop.
Official site →With its stripy neo-Gothic exterior, Rome's American Episcopal church is decorated with unusual 19th-century mosaics designed by the Birmingham-born artist Edward Burne-Jones.
Official site →Once the German Embassy, this innocuous-looking apartment block at Via Tasso 145 was the headquarters of the German SS during the Nazi occupation of Rome (1943-44). Members of the local Resistance were interrogated, tortured and imprisoned here, and you can still see the rooms where they were held and graffiti scrawled on the walls by condemned prisoners. The small, sombre museum brings to life the brutality of life under occupation, with blood-stained artefacts from the Ardeatine Massacre, when the Germans murdered 335 civilians and political prisoners as reprisal for the Resistance bombing on Via Rasella the previous day.
Official site →One of Rome's seven pilgrimage churches, established in 320 by Emperor Constantine's mother, Helena, to house her collection of relics in the grounds of her palace. She had travelled to Jerusalem hoping to find relics and, miraculously, found some extremely choice ones: here you can see a piece of the cross on which Jesus was crucified, a nail from the crucifixion and some thorns from his crown. The church's heavenly blue 15th-century Renaissance apse frescoes are particularly beautiful, depicting the story of Christ's cross.
Official site →Hidden behind Santa Croce, this collection was amassed by the tenor Evangelista Gorga, who sang Rodolfo in Puccini's first-ever performance of La Bohème; after he retired he devoted himself to it. Housed in the former home of St Helena, the museum is undeservedly but refreshingly deserted, with gorgeously painted, handle-operated 18th-century Neapolitan street pianos and one of the oldest known pianos (1722).
Official site →The basilica itself is free. The paid extras are the loggia mosaics tour (€6), the loggia and dome tour (€9) and the excavations beneath the church (€11.50); tours take about 90 minutes in English or Italian and can be booked online or at the desk to the right of the entrance.
This self-guided tour of Palazzo Massimo, the flagship of the Museo Nazionale Romano, moves floor by floor through a palace whose rooms and galleries are grouped around an inner courtyard. Sculptures on the ground level trace Rome's passage from republic to empire, while the first floor spans the imperial golden age and the long decline; on the second floor come the frescoes and mosaics, while the basement is given over to coins and household goods. The museum's information panels are excellent and worth lingering over; remember that in Italian a room is a *sala* and a hall a *galleria*. The sandstone palazzo rises on the edge of the Esquilino, a short stroll from the Monti quarter or the wider Esquilino district.
Just past the ticket turnstile, a big, gaudy Minerva of the pagan pantheon sets the tone and offers a reminder that every statue here, now limbless, eroded or weathered to bare stone, was once complete and painted to look convincingly alive. Continue into the first corridor, Gallery I, packed with portrait busts of the republican era (500-1 BC). These are the stern, plain faces of the farming founders of Rome, lined and craggy, brutally frank, a world away from idealised Greek sculpture. The Romans honoured forebears and respected citizens with lifelike images meant to preserve their memory and teach the rising generation, radiating old-fashioned virtue.
In Room I, scholars still argue over a portrait relief labelled simply as the head of an old man (Rilievo con ritratto di uomo anziano), which some identify as Rome's most famous citizen. Whether or not it is Julius Caesar, it is a fitting pause to revisit his career. His prominent forehead, high cheekbones and balding head combed forward marked the general who conquered Gaul, plundered Egypt and made Cleopatra pregnant before seizing the helm of state, instituting sweeping changes and making himself the centre of power. A circle of republican senators hemmed him in during a Senate meeting and stabbed him in turn; Brutus, a close friend, numbered among the killers, and the dying Caesar is said to have reproached him by name.
Room V, a big glassed-in hall, holds a statue of Augustus as tall as a man, shown as Pontifex Maximus (Augusto Pontefice Massimo). The first emperor was born Octavian, the adopted grandnephew of Julius Caesar; he removed his competitors Mark Antony and Cleopatra, reunited the warring factions and reigned for 44 years, ushering in two centuries of calm and plenty, the Pax Romana. Here he wears no armour and no laurel crown, his toga pulled up over his head as Rome's highest priest. The historian Suetonius described him as unusually handsome, calm and mild, with clear, bright eyes and slightly curly golden hair, and sculptors duly idealised his features into something almost godlike. Beside him stands his wife Livia, an influential force behind the throne whose stern, tight-lipped stare supposedly cowed rivals at court, and her towering braided hairstyle became the rage of the empire. Livia pushed her son Tiberius toward the succession, and gossip even accused her of poisoning Augustus, who died after eating some bad figs. In a nearby glass case sits the bust of Caligula (AD 37-41), the archetype of the tyrant whose unchecked power let him indulge his basest whims: he squandered the treasury, taxed and extorted his subjects and was eventually assassinated.
Gallery III presents Rome's Greek mentors. The Romans conquered the more cultured Greek world and adopted its deities, artistic styles and customs wholesale. Bronze and marble likenesses of the youthful conqueror Alexander the Great (Alessandro Magno, 356-323BC) show him whose features became the benchmark for imperial portraiture; he built a Greek-speaking realm spanning Greece, Egypt and Persia before he turned 30, and his tutor was Aristotle, whose own teacher was Plato, pupil of Socrates, whose portrait bust appears nearby as the founding figure of Western philosophy. In Room VI stands the Dying Niobid (Niobide Morente, 440 BC), a rare surviving Greek original: a child of Niobe, shot by the goddess Artemis because her mother boasted of her offspring, twisting gracefully on a vertical axis as she reaches for the arrow that the cavity drilled into her back once held. The Romans shipped away statues that were centuries old to decorate their estates and palaces, and when the supply of originals ran short, workshops churned out knockoffs of wildly varying quality.
Room VII contains the museum's most celebrated bronzes. The Boxer at Rest (Pugilatore, 1st century BC) sits slumped between rounds, gasping for air, his face scarred, his ears cauliflowered, his back muscles knotted, copper inlays mapping his wounds; he turns his head with a puzzled air, as if wondering why he is losing again. Across the room stands the restored Hellenistic Prince (Principe Elenistico), a naked figure propped on a spear, thought to depict Attalus II of Pergamon, echoing the celebrated portrait of his idol Alexander.
The first floor opens with the aftermath of Augustus' dynasty. After the catastrophic blaze of AD 64, which many Romans blamed on Nero himself, the final Julio-Claudian faced a death sentence and killed himself aided by a servant. The Flavian family portraits that follow show Vespasian (AD 69-79), a balding, wrinkled, double-chinned man born to a tax collector who restored integrity to government, increased taxes and launched the Colosseum, putting down the Jewish revolt; his son Domitian (AD 81-96), with a contemptuous curl to his lip, builder of the vast Imperial Palace on the Palatine, who executed Vestal Virgins while keeping a string of mistresses until his own wife had a servant stab him; and the elderly, childless Nerva (AD 96-98), who realised the ruling family proved as flawed as those before it and broke the pattern by adopting an heir from beyond the capital's corrupting reach.
Room II celebrates a cosmopolitan culture at its height. Trajan (AD 98-117), born in Spain, extended the frontiers to their widest reach, spanning three continents, with plunder streaming in from the empire's every corner, pouring into a metropolis of over a million inhabitants; here he wears a lion's pelt and casts himself as a second Hercules. The historian Livy captured the city's sense of manifest destiny, writing that the gods willed Rome to rule the world as its capital, the Caput Mundi. Hadrian (AD 117-138), the empire's great traveller and the first emperor to wear a beard, adopted the pose of the philosopher he fancied himself. He toured the realm from end to end, from the wall he built across Britain to the Nile in Egypt, and gave the capital the Pantheon, plus his sprawling villa at Tivoli. Standing with him are the pair who meant most to him: Sabina, his wife, and the teenage boy Antinous, whose drowning in the Nile sent the emperor into a frenzy of grief and statue-making across the empire.
The paired galleries V and VI pause at Rome's grandeur to show what the Romans admired most: gods who look human and humans who look godlike, statues that once graced the gardens of the wealthy, amid greenery, with fountains splashing nearby, the marble once glowing with bright, lifelike colour. The crouching Aphrodite (Afrodite al Bagno Accovacciata) animates her entire body as she twists around to admire her reflection while bathing, a copy of a Greek classic that Hadrian ordered for his own bathroom. The Discus Thrower (Discobolo) is the finest surviving Roman replica of Myron's Greek original of 450 BC, complete in every limb: the athlete winds up, poised to release his coiled energy, so geometrically balanced that a perfect circle traced around him has his hip bone at the midpoint, at once lifelike and perfected, coiled yet poised. Tiny bumps on his scalp guided the measuring apparatus employed in replication, and such athlete figures usually took their place in the bathhouses, where Romans trained the body, the mind and the social graces.
Room VII continues with the Sleeping Hermaphroditus (Ermafrodito Dormiente), the offspring of the gods Hermes and Aphrodite, whose reclining nude seems from the back to be a flawless, slender feminine silhouette until you circle around to discover both breasts and male genitalia; and the Apollo of the Tiber (Apollo del Tevere), a slender, headbanded youth standing in a relaxed contrapposto, his rusted stains betraying long years at the bottom of the river. A side room holds the fittings of Caligula's Nemi ships, a pair of floating pleasure barges, the larger some 70 metres long, outfitted with marble shrines and bronze fittings, deliberately sunk in Lake Nemi in AD 41; the exquisitely detailed bronze animals holding mooring rings are displayed here.
The final rooms trace the collapse. Septimius Severus (AD 193-211) kept the sprawling empire together and won him an imposing victory arch at the Forum, while his son Caracalla (AD 211-217), with his unshaven jaw, harsh scowl and menacing stare, killed his own brother to take the throne and then massacred thousands of citizens before an assassin struck him from behind. A sarcophagus of AD 270 (Sarcofago con Corteo) shows a procession of dignitaries shepherding a boy emperor up the Capitoline, huddled together and warily scanning for assassins, their expressions reflecting what historians call the age of anxiety; within four decades, 15 emperors were hailed and then cut down. A small statuette of Christ Teaching (Cristo Docente, AD 350) shows a beardless Jesus seated as a Roman senator would be, in a toga, scroll in hand, handing out wisdom with the authority of statute, dating from the generation after Constantine legalised Christianity. A Christian sarcophagus pairs Old and New Testament scenes around a figure with raised hands in ancient prayer. The city was sacked by foreigners in 410, the last emperor retired in 476, and the treasures you see today were buried beneath the ruins for centuries.
The top floor holds the greatest treasure of villa painting: frescoes and mosaics from the homes of the aristocracy, that wealthiest slice of ancient society, and they are strikingly lifelike and refreshingly unstuffy: everyday people, animals, floral patterns and geometric designs, the finest ancient painting on show anywhere outside Pompeii. Frescoes from the Villa Farnesina, painted in blacks, reds, yellows and blues, mostly render architectural fantasy, conjuring false columns, festooned friezes and hanging garlands.
The highlight of the collection is the Villa of Livia's painted subterranean dining room. Descending out of the summer heat into this space is like stepping into a lush garden alive with birdsong and fruit-laden trees, symbolising the gods, the one trace of humankind a slender wicker fence. The painter used atmospheric perspective, a crisp foreground against a misty, blurred background, to manufacture a convincing sense of depth, a device Leonardo da Vinci would famously exploit fifteen centuries later; raise your eyes and picture the decorative panelling spanning the curved vault above.
The basement's *Luxury in Rome* rooms offer a glimpse of how the city's affluent residents lived, fine jewellery alongside humble household items. The most poignant sight is a mummified child of eight, who died in the 2nd century AD; her stone coffin was unearthed not far from Rome in 1964, and the doll buried with her lies on display beside her.
Then comes a vast numismatic trove, where you can hunt for the face of your preferred emperor or empress: Julius Caesar, Augustus and his system of denarii, Tiberius, Caligula and Nero all appear in the cases. Study how Diocletian adjusted the gold standard, and reflect that a single denarius bought one egg in AD 300. The displays then trace Italian money from the denarius to the old lira and on to the euro.
Palazzo Massimo is seldom crowded, which makes it a marvellous refuge on a hot day, and a full tour takes about an hour and a half. The building stands at Largo di Villa Peretti 2, a short stroll from either metro stop at Repubblica or Termini; emerging from Termini station, look for the sandstone brickwork a short block to your left, with the entrance at the far west end.