Capitoline Museums Tour with Private Guide
Capitoline Museums and Piazza del Campidoglio Tour with Private Guide
This private tour will lead you on a discovery of the Capitoline Museums on the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome. This magnificent square, designed by the great Michelangelo Buonarroti, is an exceptionally elegant Renaissance square. The first part of the tour will focus on the details of its history and art, we will continue inside the two buildings of the Capitoline Museums. Here you can admire the Roman-era collections, with some of the most prestigious statues of the Roman era, the painting gallery, the buildings themselves, and the modern exhibition design created to properly highlight its collections.
Tour details
Private Tour: Capitoline Museums and Piazza del Campidoglio
Duration: 3 hours
Language: Italian
Price includes: Guide service (3 hours), admission tickets to the Capitoline Museums, headsets for groups of more than 8.
Availability: Every day, except Monday, January 1, May 1, and December 25.
Children: From 0 to under 5 are free of charge and require no reservation. No other discounts are offered.
Start time: Your choice every 30 minutes from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm.
Itinerary of Private Tour of the Capitoline Museums
The tour starts in Piazza del Campidoglio, on the top of the Roman hill of the same name. The current form of the square is based on the architectural design of Michelangelo who was commissioned by Pope Paul III Farnese. The square has an uncommon trapezoidal shape with sides bound by a grand staircase and three buildings, Palazzo Senatorio, (the ancient Tabularium, records office), the Palazzo dei Conservatori, and Palazzo Novo the third building that Michelangelo included in his design to complete the square. His re-design of the square also included several added decorative elements, including classical sculptures, and the extraordinary design of the paving.
Your guide will spend time telling you all about the architecture of the square, highlighting the innovations that Michelangelo brought with his design to make this one of Rome's most dramatically beautiful squares.
The tour then continues inside the Capitoline Museums, in two buildings on the Piazza del Campidoglio: Palazzo Novo and Palazzo dei Conservatori. The entrance is in Palazzo dei Conservatori. The guide will first show you the beauty of the inner courtyard connecting the ticket office with the exhibition area. The tour continues to this building's first floor, showing most of the museums' classical collections and paintings from the picture gallery. Conceptually divided into two parts, this floor has an exhibition area with a modern design and another part with lavishly frescoed, monumental halls. In the modern section, a large hall has recently been built with glass ceilings where the bronze equestrian sculpture of emperor Marcus Aurelius dominates the scene. In this majestic hall, you can also appreciate two beautiful Roman-era sculptures: the Lion Attacking a Horse and the colossal head of Constantine. The guide will detail the most interesting pieces exhibited on this floor of the Palazzo dei Conservatori.
The tour will then move to the second floor for a short coffee break in the museum's coffee shop. The magnificent panoramic terrace is accessed from here. We'll have time to snap a few pictures here and then go back down.
On the ground floor, your guide will lead you to discover the second building of the Capitoline collections. Palazzo Novo is reached by an underground gallery of exceptional beauty, the Tabularium, fully adorned with ancient artifacts. About halfway along this gallery, a scenic view of the Roman Forum opens up, where your guide will tell you all about what you are admiring. Inside Palazzo Novo, what impresses visitors the most is the inner courtyard where the enormous Statue of Marphurius grabs attention, one of the best-known symbols of these museums.
The tour will continue towards its end to see the collections of Palazzo Novo.
Our guides in Rome
Italy Travels tour guides staff is represented by licensed guides of great experience and high level of professionalism, competence and excellence on their job. All Italy Travels guides are authorized by the provincial administration of Rome and most of them are art historians and teachers in art subjects.
All guided tours organized by Italy Travels always include pre-reserved museum tickets when museum tours are included in the tour itinerary. In this way visitors avoid waisting time waiting in line in front of museums ticket offices.
