Capitoline Museums Tickets

Benefits

• Considered the world’s oldest public museum, on a square Michelangelo designed
• The Tabularium gallery looks straight out over the Roman Forum, included in your ticket
• Temporary exhibitions are included with the standard entry ticket

Tickets & Prices

Take the plain entry ticket. It is the venue’s bestseller, the best-rated option, and the exhibitions are already in it.

• Entry ticket – flexible entry with a smartphone voucher, temporary exhibition included. Note it is non-refundable once booked.
• Skip-the-line ticket + multimedia video – the 20-minute ancient Rome film, collected at the Touristation office on Piazza d’Ara Coeli 16 before your visit. The office is open 9:30 to 16:00, so this version suits a morning or early-afternoon start. Free cancellation until 24 hours before. Buyers rate it a notch below the plain ticket.
• Guided tour + multimedia video – a live English-speaking guide plus the film. Cancel up to 23:59 the day before if plans change.
• Capitoline Museums + Centrale Montemartini – adds Rome’s second-site collection, hundreds of Greek and Roman sculptures inside a historic industrial building across town. One ticket covers both sites.

Important notes:

• Official advance tickets carry a small presale fee and cannot be refunded or changed. Visitors also report the official booking site erroring out on far-ahead dates. Walk-up queues at the museum stay short.
• Children aged 0 – 5 go free, with a complimentary ticket issued at the box office.
• First Sunday of the month is free for everyone, subject to capacity, except the Villa Caffarelli exhibition space.

Plan Your Visit

What to See & Do

Plan on two to three hours. The collection began in 1471, when Pope Sixtus IV bequeathed the city its first bronze statues, and it now fills historic palazzi around Michelangelo’s square – the icons of Rome’s founding story next to Caravaggio paintings and Baroque marble. Repeat Rome visitors call this the city’s most underrated museum, the kind of collection that would headline as a top-three attraction in any other city.

The Marcus Aurelius statue and the Colossus of Constantine

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The equestrian Marcus Aurelius on the piazza outside is a copy. The original bronze lives indoors in a modern glass hall, protected from the elements – antiquity’s greatest surviving equestrian statue, probably erected to mark the emperor’s victory over the Germanic tribes in 176 AD. He has been riding for eighteen and a half centuries.

The Colossus of Constantine greets you earlier than you expect. Its fragments stand in the museum courtyard, right at the start of the visit. The seated statue of Rome’s first Christian emperor once rose about 40 feet, and the right hand alone, index finger raised, stands over five feet high. The pieces were dug out of the Basilica of Maxentius in the Roman Forum in the 15th century.

The Capitoline Wolf

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The she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus is the legend of Rome’s founding cast in bronze, and the city’s symbol to this day. She originally stood on the facade of the Palazzo dei Conservatori and was moved inside for protection. This is the actual statue.

You also walk over the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter, still in their original spot inside the museum. The hill’s ancient heart never moved.

The Dying Gaul and the Capitoline Venus

Cross to the Palazzo Nuovo, about a dozen rooms holding some of the finest ancient sculpture in Rome. The Dying Gaul is a work of raw pathos, a stricken warrior buckling to the ground with blood streaming from his chiselled torso. Many visitors rate it the most famous sculpture in the building. The Capitoline Venus stands a few rooms away, one of the most admired of all ancient sculptures.

The Caravaggio paintings in the Pinacoteca

The picture gallery upstairs in the Palazzo dei Conservatori is a quieter, honestly middling stretch of the visit – except for its two Caravaggios. In The Fortune Teller, a fortune teller reads a young man’s palm while quietly slipping the ring off his finger. St John the Baptist hangs in the same collection, the young saint sprawled on a bed of leaves with a ram clasped to him.

The Tabularium view over the Roman Forum

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The Tabularium was Republican Rome’s records hall, cut into the rock of the hill, where the bronze tablets of Roman law were kept. Today it forms the museum’s basement, reached by the corridor that runs under the piazza between the two palazzi. It is one of the quietest corners of the visit, and its arcades open onto a sweeping view over the Roman Forum with the Colosseum beyond. It comes with your museum ticket.

Insider Tips

• Save the museums for the hottest hours. Summer visitors do the Forum and Colosseum in the morning, then spend midday here indoors.
• The rooftop cafe terrace has its own entrance from the steps of the Capitol Hill, no museum ticket needed, open daily 9:30 – 19:00. The view runs from Teatro Marcello across the Jewish Ghetto to the curve of the Pantheon’s dome.
• On your way out, take the lane behind the museums. It winds down off the hill past a free, quiet view over the Forum and Palatine.
• If you are in it for the art, give it the full three hours or you will miss key pieces.
• Two palazzi of sculpture is a lot in one go. Pace the visit rather than marching it.

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