Rome Guide
Rome
Palazzo Altemps
Address: Piazza Sant'Apollinare, just across the street from the north end of Piazza Navona
Opening time: Tues– Sun 9am–7pm
Price: €7; part of the Museo Nazionale Romano along with the Palazzo Massimo, Crypta Balbi and Museo delle Terme di Diocleziano. The €7 entry covers all museums and is valid for 7 days.
The beautifully restored Palazzo Altemps has a wonderful collection of Roman statuary. On the ground floor at the far end of the courtyard's loggia is a statue of the Emperor Antoninus Pius, and, around the corner, a couple of heads of Zeus and Pluto, and a bust of Julia, the daughter of the Emperor Augustus. There are two almost identical statues of Apollo the Lyrist, a magnificent statue of Athena taming a serpent, pieced together from fragments found near the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and, in the far corner of the courtyard, a Dionysus with a satyr and panther, found on the Quirinal Hill. Upstairs you get a slightly better sense of the original building – some of the frescoes remain and the north loggia retains its original, late-sixteenth-century decoration, simulating a vine-laden pergola. Among the objects on display there's a fine statue of Hermes, a wonderful statue of a warrior at rest, and a charmingly sensitive portrayal of Orestes and Electra, from the first century AD by a sculptor called Menelaus – his name is carved at the base of one of the figures. In a later room stands a colossal head of Hera, and – what some consider the highlight of the entire collection – the famous Ludovisi throne, embellished with a delicate relief portraying the birth of Aphrodite. Further on, the Fireplace Salon – whose huge fireplace is embellished with caryatids and lurking ibex, the symbol of the Altemps family – has the so-called Suicide of Galatian, apparently commissioned by Julius Caesar to adorn his Quirinal estate. At the other end of the room, an incredible sarco-phagus depicts a battle between the Romans and barbarians in graphic, almost viscerally sculptural detail.