Museo Gregoriano Etrusco (Gregorian Etruscan Museum)

Info Telefon: 0669883333

The museum was founded by Pope Gregory XVI in 1837 and mostly contains objects that starting from 1828 were found in the excavations of the ancient cities of southern Etruria (today northern Latium), then part of the Pontifical State. With the end of the Pontifical State in 1870, the territorial authority of the museum comes to an end and it will no longer be enlarged by excavation material but only by the occasional acquisition of archaeolgical collections, all of old formation and extraordinary importance: the purchase of the Falcioni collection (1898), the donations of Benedetto Guglielmi in 1935 and of Mario Astarita in 1967, the purchase of the Giacinto Guglielmi collection in 1987. The museum contains material from between the 9th and the 1st century BC, from the iron age until the progressive and definitive converging of the Etruscan cities into the structure of the Roman state. The millenary history of the Etruscan people is narrated here by ceramics, bronzes, silver and gold which document a flourishing craft structure and a special artistic civilization. An integral part of the museum is the large collection of Greek vases, although these were found in the Etruscan necropolises, and of Italiot vases (produced in the Hellenized cities of southern Italy), which permit following the history of ancient painting through famous products of potters and ceramists. Adjacent to the Etruscan Museum is a section dedicated to Roman antiquities (Antiquarium Romanum), which come from Rome itself and from Lazio, with bronzes, glass, architectural terra-cottas and ceramics for everyday use. The museum is located within the Palazzetto of Innocent VIII (1484-1492) and in the adjacent building of the time of Pius IV (1559-1565), where it is possible to admire considerable parts of the original decoration, among which frescoes by Federico Barocci and Federico Zuccari (1563) and by Santi di Tito and Niccolò Circignani delle Pomarance (1564).

Picture: Bucchero inkwell

 

Museo Gregoriano Profano

Info Telefon: 669883333

Archaeological Museum.
 

Museo Pio Clementino di Scultura

Info Telefon: 669883333

Museo Pio Cristiano

Info Telefon: 669883333

Museo Storico Vaticano

Info Telefon: 669886386

Lunedì-sabato con visite guidate a orari stabiliti: 9.oo, 10.oo, 11.00,12.00 h. Chiuso domenica e festivi.

Museo Storico-Artistico o Tesoro di San Pietro

Fax.: 0669883410

Info Telefon: 0669881840

Aprile-settembre: lunedì-domenica 9.00-18.30 h. Ottobre-marzo: lunedì-domenica 9.00-17.30 h

Padiglione delle Carrozze

Info Telefon: 669883333

Pinacoteca

Info Telefon: 0669883333

The new Vatican Pinacoteca (Art Gallery) was inaugurated on 27 October 1932 in the building especially constructed by the architect Luca Beltrami for Pius XI. It was built in the nineteenth century Square Garden, isolated and completely surrounded by avenues, in a place considered suitable for assuring the best lighting conditions for both the correct preservation of the works and their optimum aesthetic enhancement. Thus the age-old question of the exhibition of the paintings, which were constantly moved around the Apostolic Palaces due to the lack of a setting that matched their importance, was solved. A first collection of only 118 precious paintings was created by Pope Pius VI around 1790. It was of short duration due to the fact that, following the Treaty of Tolentino (1797) some of the greatest masterpieces were transferred to Paris. The idea of an art gallery, understood in the modern sense as an exhibition open to the public, was only born in 1817 after the fall of Napoleon and the consequent return to the Church State of a large part of the works belonging to it, according to the directions of the Congress of Vienna. The collection continued to grow over the years through donations and purchases until it reached the current nucleus of 460 paintings, distributed among the eighteen rooms on the basis of chronology and school, from the so-called Primitives (12th-13th century) to the 19th century. The collection contains some masterpieces of the greatest artists of the history of Italian painting, from Giotto to Beato Angelico, from Melozzo da Forlì to Perugino and to Raphael, from Leonardo to Tiziano, to Veronese, to Caravaggio and to Crespi.

 

Pontificio Museo Missionario Etnologico (Ethnological Missionary Museum)

Info Telefon: 0669883333

The Ethnological Missionary Museum was founded by Pope Pius XI with the Motu Proprio Quoniam tam praeclara on 12 November 1926, on the closure of the Universal Missionary Exhibition, which the Pontiff himself had desired on the occasion of the Holy Year of 1925. On 1 February 1927 the museum was inaugurated in the rooms of the Lateran Palace where it remained until 1963. In 1973, under the pontificate of Paul VI, it was relocated in its present site in the Vatican. The original nucleus of the collection, of about 40,000 works, had been chosen by a special committee - in which the Verbite Father Wilhelm Schmidt was very active - from among 100,000 objects from all over the world, offered to the Pope from private donors, from the missions and from 400 Dioceses for the great Exhibition of 1925. Over the years, the initial collection has been enriched with new acquisitions and donations offered to the Pontiffs. Among these must be nemtioned the collection of the Borgiano Museum of Propaganda Fide, the collection of Chinese numismatics of Father Giuseppe Kuo, the plaster protraits of the American-Indian populations made by the German sculptor Ferdinand Pettrich, and again the collection of prehistorical objects of the British School of Archaeology of Jerusalem and the precious collection of ceremonial objects from the area of Sepik (New Guinea) that belonged to Father Kirschbaum. The present museum collection, which amounts to about 80,000 works, is structured into two distinct routes. In the first, open to the public, there are objects of above all a religious nature from four geographical areas (Asia, Oceania, Africa, America). This is flanked by a section called "Missionary Synthesis" which is a collection of works produced following evangelization. The second route contains collections, again arranged with geo-cultural criteria, that are more generally products of different societies. These are stored away and can be seen on request.

Picture: Ferdinand Pettrich (1798-1872): Collection of North American Indian portraits, plaster


 

Stanze di Raffaello (Raphael' s Rooms)

Info Telefon: 0669883333

Visitabile a richiesta

The four rooms known as the Stanze of Raphael formed part of the apartment situated on the second floor of the Pontifical Palace that was chosen by Julius II della Rovere (pontiff from 1503 to 1513) as his own residence and used also by his successors. The pictorial decoration was executed by Raphael and his school between 1508 and 1524.